A Time to Weep, and a Time to Laugh
by KaasKnot
Summary: AU. Claire runs across a certain watchmaker's shop while out for a walk.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: this is my first major fanfic, and it really got out of hand. Enjoy, and R&R!

Claire Bennet gently closed the cover of her textbook and let it slip from her fingers to fall on the floor beside her armchair. Sighing, she ground the heels of her palms into her eyes, wishing she could rub out the tired grit under her lids. Even after 250-odd years of life, studying never got any easier. At least now she could study useful things, like business management or medicine, instead of merely becoming "accomplished". Suffice to say she had stitched enough samplers to last a lifetime, even one as long as hers.

Studying US history, however, was particularly unappealing. She had avoided taking this class like the plague, despite the fact that it was required; she knew it would only remind her of past friends and past lives, of technologies and old jokes no longer relevant to today. The events they discussed in dry, factual detail were far more real to her than they were to her classmates, and they left her drained for hours afterwards. She had had to ditch the days they covered the Civil War.

Standing, she twisted her back from side to side, relishing the muted pops the action sent through her. Looking at the grandfather clock propped against the wall of her comfortable Brooklyn apartment, she jerked in surprise--it was 3pm already; she had missed most of the day studying.

_Well that settles it_, she thought to herself. _I am going for a walk_. It was a beautiful September day, and she wouldn't stand for being inside for one more minute, not if she could help it.

Bending down to pick up her fallen textbook, she placed it neatly on the coffee table, then fished out the sandals that had disappeared under the couch. She slipped them on, straightened up, and danced to the entryway. There she scooped up her keys and purse and slipped out into the warm afternoon.

Picking a direction at random, she strolled, enjoying the sun raining boldly down on her upturned face. She didn't worry about sunburn; such concerns hadn't bothered her since she discovered, many years ago, that stray musket balls didn't kill her like they ought to. Her feet carried her without her paying attention to the path they took, and she gazed at the new/familiar/strange sights that lined the sidewalk. Despite having had decades to acclimatize to this new world she lived in, parking meters and newspaper dispensers still amazed her with their inventiveness, to say nothing of the cars that packed into every available parking spot. She still remembered the days when crossing the street threatened one's shoes with a smelly coating of horse manure, and the fastest speed known to man was no more than 30 miles per hour.

This day she turned down a street she had never seen before, taking her away from the relatively large avenue she currently traveled. It was quieter on this street, mostly residential with a few small businesses scattered about. The buildings were taller than the street was wide, offering a narrow, comfortably claustrophobic feel to the street that Claire found she had missed from earlier years. Slowing her pace, she window-shopped as she moseyed along on her journey to nowhere.

A gaudy neon sign, currently unlit, caught her eye from across the street. It was more or less flush against the fire escape next to it, but it was what it advertised that grabbed her. It proclaimed a clock shop, _Gray & Sons_, with an arrow pointing down toward the unassuming door below.

Claire felt her heart skip a beat. It always pleased her to see someone else cling to the old-fashioned ideals of maintenance rather than replacement in this day and age, and she had to admit--it was nice to see that the traditional trades had not been entirely been forsaken.

This particular trade, however, held a special place in her heart. Her grandfather had been a clock smith, and she had spent many a happy afternoon as a child mending the small projects that he gave her. Like so many of the people in her first life his face was blurry, as though seen through a layer of water, or through an irregular pane of glass made the old-fashioned way. She barely recalled his bushy white eyebrows, and of tugging on the queue that kept his hair out of the way. She remembered his smell clearly, however--a mix of pipe tobacco and the oil he used to grease the gears of his clocks.

She felt the sad half-smile work across her face, caught up in her memories. She didn't know why the past was forcing itself forward so powerfully all of a sudden; perhaps it was because of her blasted history homework, or maybe her hormones just had it in for her today. Either way, she couldn't really help herself when her feet started across the street, dodging around a parked van for a paper company along the way.

She heard a bell ring overhead as she entered the cool shade of the shop. The gentle ticking of the clocks covering every surface was surprisingly soothing to her, familiar a sound as it was, and a tension she didn't even know she was carrying eased out of her. This was a slice of her past come back to life. She smiled a genuine smile for the first time in what felt like ages.

Running her fingers along the edge of a glass case, she saw that it was displaying antique carriage clocks, much like the ones that graced her second husband's carriages. Just like that she was abruptly reminded that for all that this was familiar, it was not _her_ time.

Sighing, Claire turned to face the counter, but there was no one there to greet her, no clerk to ask how he might be of assistance. Frowning, she called out. "Hello?" There was no response. "Is anyone there?"

Instead of a reply, she heard a muffled choking sound coming from the back of the shop. Eyes widening, she rushed around the front counter to the workroom. She knew that sound intimately, and it spurred her on.

Wheeling around the corner, she saw a man jerking and twisting from a rope hanging from a beam high above, choking as his airway closed under the pull of his own weight.

Without thinking she immediately skirted the desk between them as fast as her short legs could carry her, throwing her purse aside and scanning for something with which to cut the rope. A utility knife caught her eye, and she snatched it up, running back to the man thrashing from the ceiling, fingers clawing fruitlessly at his neck.

She was far too short to reach the rope. Even if she were to stand on the chair he had obviously kicked out from under himself she wouldn't quite be able to reach. Cursing her lack of height, she swept a heap of paperwork off the desk and clambered on top of it. Standing straight, she pushed out the razor blade, turned to face the man, whose eyes were by this time bulging out behind his glasses, face turning a distressing shade of purple, and commenced sawing at the rope over his head.

He kicked spasmodically as she sliced through the last strands, and he collapsed to the floor with a painful sounding thump. Jumping down from her perch, her nurse's training came flooding back as she checked his condition. She made sure his airway was clear, wincing as her hands passed over the ligature marks already blooming on his pale skin, checked his pulse and, pulling off his skewed glasses, his pupils. His face was rapidly regaining a normal color, and though his breath came out in agonizing chokes and wheezes, his respiration was returning to normal.

"Sir, I need you to listen to me. Are you alright?" She asked slowly and clearly as he regained a modicum of control over his breathing.

Staring at her with wild, haunted eyes, he whispered, "Forgive me." Then his face crumpled, and he curled toward her. Involuntarily her arms wrapped around his shaking shoulders as she wordlessly offered him comfort.

Claire didn't know how long she sat there, holding him as he sobbed out his hurt, but one thought circulated in her mind: _What compelled this man to try and kill himself?_


	2. Chapter 2

The bell rang as the front door opened.

Claire reflexively glanced toward the front of the store before looking back at the man in her arms, quiescent now. He shifted, and made motions as though to stand, but Claire gently pushed him back down, sitting him against a row of file cabinets.

"You just stay here, I'll take care it." He nodded dully, his eyes vacant and staring.

Concern seeping through her, she tore her eyes away from his tear-stained face and stepped around the dividing wall to the front counter. The customer was a young woman, with blond hair and sharp, elfin features. She looked somewhat confused and suspicious to see Claire behind the counter. "Where's Gabriel Gray?" she asked.

Gabriel? Claire gathered that was the man's name. _Named after the best-loved of the Angels_, she thought. _He certainly had an angel watching over him today_. "Mr. Gray isn't available at the moment," she said politely. "There was a family tragedy."

The woman looked at her shrewdly. "The door was unlocked and the sign was flipped to open."

"He just received the news," Claire improvised. "I apologize miss, but he's simply not available now. I can hold your items for him, or you can come back tomorrow."

The woman did not give up so easily. "Who are you to him?"

Claire allowed herself the luxury of indignation. "I fail to see how that is any concern of yours," she said somewhat coldly. "Please come back tomorrow, he really is not in any condition to assist customers."

Not even this seemed to faze the woman. Bound and determined, she started around the front counter, and made to enter the back office and workshop. "Let me--"

"Miss!" Claire barked, her voice cutting through the quiet ticking of the air. The woman froze, eyes wide with shock. That this tiny girl, seemingly barely out of puberty, would raise her voice so authoritatively clearly surprised her. "I have told you that Mr. Gray is not available. Furthermore I have provided you with two alternatives, and I apologize that neither seems to suit you, but nevertheless that does not change the fact that he will not see you now." She moved to stand in front of the door to the back, blocking the woman's path. "Now I am afraid I must ask you to leave."

She watched as the woman's lips compressed into a thin line, her nostrils flaring and a frustrated look flickering in her eye, but she merely jerked her head in an abrupt nod and marched out.

Watching the woman through the front window, Claire saw as she pounded on the side of a van across the street, marked with "Primatech". A man wearing horn-rimmed glasses popped his head out the back, looking expectant. He asked a question; the woman seemed to respond in the negative. The man did not look pleased. He stepped out, and they both exchanged heated words as they circled the van to the front cab, the woman gesticulating wildly. Finally Horn-Rimmed-Glasses grabbed one of Excitable-Customer's flailing arms, thrusting it firmly back down to her side, and said something terse and threatening. She glared daggers at him, and a tense silence developed that Claire could feel all the way across the street. Seemingly on cue they simultaneously looked back toward the shop, dark curiosity painting the features of the man but petulant anger gracing the woman's. They turned away and got in the van.

A nasty, sinking feeling settled into the pit of Claire's stomach as their doors slammed and the van pulled away from the curb. She didn't know why they were so evidently spying on Mr. Gray, but she didn't think was for his personal benefit. With that thought, she turned and walked back to where the man in question sat, hunched and miserable-looking, on the floor beside his files.

Conscious of her hem, Claire sank down to sit beside him. He quickly raised his head to glance at her before returning his gaze to his hands, which were tangling themselves into a knot in his lap. Absently she noted that his hands were long and slender, and quite lovely.

Then he spoke. "Why did you save me." His voice was ragged and thick with tears, and it was more a statement than a question, but Claire answered it anyway.

"I can't believe anything you have done or have had done to you warrants death," she said calmly, regarding him with a clinical eye.

He responded with a harsh laugh, choked-off and ugly. "You don't even know anything about me."

Claire pondered that for a moment before responding. Reaching for his glasses, tossed carelessly on the floor under a desk, she held them as she spoke. "I know whatever happened has caused you enough sorrow that you feel only your death can ease the hurt." He turned away from her, his face flushing, and he reached up to touch his throat. She continued on. "I want you to understand that is not the case. Death rarely solves any problems." She held the glasses out to him.

With shaking hands he accepted them, holding them gingerly as though he was afraid they weren't real. "I did an unforgivable thing," he murmured brokenly. "A man had something that I wanted, and I took it at a terrible price."

"Nothing is unforgivable," Claire said firmly. "I was here in time to cut you down; does that not seem to be a sign?"

He smiled, this time gentle and sad, and on the verge of a sob. Collecting himself, he turned to look at her. "I don't even know your name."

"Claire," she said gently.

"Claire," he repeated. Looking down at the glasses in his hand, he slipped them on. When he looked back at her, his face was slightly more composed. "Well, look at you Claire, just showing up out of nowhere." He paused, as though looking within, before continuing: "like an angel."

"I'm no angel," Claire said, smiling cheekily, "but thank you for the compliment." With that she stood up, brushing off her dress before turning to regard the man at her feet. He was looking up at her with something akin to awe on his face. Stretching out her hand, she offered it to him. Tentatively he took it, and she helped pull him to his feet, steadying him when he wobbled.

Then she looked up--and up, and up--to see his face. "My, you certainly are tall," she said conversationally, hoping to get another, happier smile out of him. Instead, he seemed to shrink into himself, hunching his shoulders. He turned slightly away, and dropped her hand as though it burned him. He looked almost exactly like a kicked puppy, and her heart twisted in her chest.

She reached out then, and placing her hands on his arms, turned him gently back to face her. He did, but kept his face averted. "Look at me," she said softly. He didn't, flushing again, and she squeezed his arms a little. "_Look at me_," she pressed. Reluctantly he did, and she was temporarily side-tracked by his eyes. _So deep_, she thought before catching herself.

"That was not an insult, Gabriel," she said, smiling gently. "I can't help it if I've been knee-high to a grasshopper ever since I _was_ knee-high to a grasshopper." _A double-meaning if there ever was one_, she thought ironically to herself. Confusion poured from those glorious doe eyes, and she mentally shook her head. Someone had done a number on him, that much was certain. She would have to step lightly, indeed.

She tried a more direct approach. "You were blessed with height, don't be ashamed of it," she said. "It's part of what makes you special, part of what makes you _you_."

That seemed to get through to him. "Y-you think I'm special?" He asked hesitantly.

Claire's eyebrows rose. "Of course. You are a clock smith, for instance. They are not very common these days."

From the look on his face this was a revelation for him. Claire wondered where he got his information about himself; it didn't seem to be a very reliable source. Mentally she shrugged her questions away for a later time.

Squeezing his arms once again, she let go and let her hands drop. Stepping away, she held out her hand, palm open. "I don't believe we have been formally introduced," she said. "My name is Claire Bennet, currently a junior at NYU. And you are?"

He took her hand and gently shook it, nearly swallowing it in his own broad palm. "Gabriel Gray, maker and restorer of timepieces," he said, letting loose a shy smile that almost took Claire's breath away. He really was quite a handsome man. "It's nice to meet you Claire Bennet, and thank you."

Claire grinned broadly in return. "It was nothing, Mr. Gray." Turning away, she retrieved her purse from the corner where she had tossed it, then returned to his side. "I'm not sure it would be a wise idea for you to mind the store, today," she suggested. "For one, those ligature marks are positively livid." She reached up and touched his neck.

He winced and shied away from her touch--then seemed to catch himself and carefully returned to his former position. "I'm sorry," he apologized, obviously bracing himself as though for further assault. Claire abruptly dropped her hand. His reaction had been a little more severe than even she had anticipated. She gave him a long, scrutinizing look, under which he fidgeted in discomfort. Her mind then proceeded to pull up the various bits of knowledge she had gleaned from him during their conversation, added two and two together, and hoped to the depths of hell her math was wrong.

"No, _I_ apologize, Gabriel," she said finally. "I should have known better." Taking a deep breath, she looked around the slightly cluttered workshop, noting the decided lack of comforts. That certainly wouldn't do. Returning her gaze to his face, she inquired, "Do you live nearby?"

Momentarily thrown, he stuttered, "Ah, no, not... I mean--I--Queens. I live in Queens."

Claire nodded to herself. "My apartment is just a few blocks away. That would be better, I think." She looked up at him for confirmation. He just looked confused again, the expression crinkling his face in the most adorable way.

She let out a mental sigh. "Come with me, Mr. Gray, you are going to close up shop for the rest of today and tomorrow, and I am going to make you a pot of tea." She stepped toward the door before turning back to regard him. Hesitantly he began to follow her, curiosity etched in the line of his every movement.

Claire called that progress.


	3. Chapter 3

Elle stormed out of the shop, fuming as she approached the van. How dare she? How dare that tiny slip of a girl think she could stop her? Elle chose to ignore the fact that that tiny slip of a girl had indeed stopped her, and stopped her more efficiently than a brick wall stopped a speeding car.

Dodging a passing Volkswagon, she banged on the side in the prearranged pattern, alerting her partner to her presence. She stood back as the doors opened, revealing the mobile command center within. Noah Bennet poked his head out, an expectant look on his weathered face.

"Did we get an in?" he asked.

Elle shifted angrily. "No, a situation came up and I couldn't follow through." Her anger bled to discomfort as Noah settled back on his haunches, watching her, his face unreadable.

"A situation came up." It was said in a neutral tone, and was all the fuel he needed to send Elle into a nervous tizzy.

"It wasn't my fault!" Elle replied, defensive. "Some bitch got to him first, I couldn't just _zap_ her, now could I?"

"Whatever gets the job done," Bennet said smoothly, hopping out of the van and slamming the doors behind him. He walked around to the passenger side of the van and opened the door for her. "You have less of a problem with that than most, Elle, so I find myself somewhat confused."

"I didn't have a choice!" Elle cried, gesticulating wildly. "She wouldn't let me see him, she was like a rabid dog protecting a bone! Even if I _had_ just pushed my way in, zapping her and going straight to Gabriel, don't you think that would have looked just a bit suspicious? And why do we even need to watch this guy anyway? I bet there're dozens just like--"

One of her straying hands nearly collided with Bennet's head, and she was cut off when he seized it. Thrusting it down to her side, he said softly, "Watch those hands, Elle." His tone implied what might happen if she didn't.

Elle glared at him, burying her tinge of fear beneath angry bravado. Bennet just looked back at her placidly, a knowing looking in his eye.

He broke the deadlock first, turning to look back at the shop, and Elle automatically followed his gaze. She couldn't see the strange young woman from here, but she knew she was still in there. She sent all her anger through her gaze, and all of the blame she had in her heart.

Noah's hand dropped from her arm as he turned back to face her. "Get in the van, Elle. I'll explain on the way." He turned his back on her, walking around the front to get to the driver's side. She resisted the urge to fry him with a high-powered bolt of electricity before climbing in and slamming the door.

***

It was several minutes before Noah spoke, guiding the van down the winding, car-packed streets in the heart of Brooklyn. "There aren't, in fact, dozens of people just like Gabriel Gray."

She didn't look at him, but kept her gaze fixed on the concrete and brick flowing past her window. Noah continued on despite. "What Mr. Gray can do is extraordinary; the ability to transfer power from one vessel to another is extremely rare, and we need to know exactly how he does it."

Elle stirred. "Why not just bag and tag him, then? Then we can study him without all the spying."

Noah regarded her for a moment before answering. "For years scientists were stumped with the mystery of whale migration. In such a big ocean, how do they find each other?" He said this with an annunciatory tone, as though the words he spoke were of the greatest importance.

Elle finally turned around to face him at the apparent non-sequitir, puzzlement etched across her brow. Where was he going with this?

"And then one night in the frozen Pacific, an enterprising biologist recorded their song in the wild." He pulled his gaze from the road to catch hers as he drove his point home. "They don't sing in captivity."

"So... we need to get our whale to sing." She sighed before sitting back in her seat, thumping her head against her headrest.

"And that back there was our best chance to get him to," Noah said. "He was isolated, guilt-ridden, and ripe for the picking. It'll be much harder to get him to kill again if he has a support system outside of us."

"That's easy enough to fix," Elle said. "Get rid of the support system."

Noah turned to smile at her, a small smile curling his lips. "Exactly."

Brightening under his positive regard, Elle held up her hands and began dancing sparks back and forth from her fingertips. She feigned disinterest and calm collectedness, but she had a feeling Noah saw right through her. "So what do we do first, Yoda?"

Noah glanced at Elle, smiling faintly. "What did you learn about this woman?"

Elle flushed. "Not much," she mumbled. "I kind of let my temper get away from me."

Noah didn't say anything, didn't even look at her, but pulled an immediate u-turn, cutting off a car in the oncoming lane. Ignoring the irate horn blaring behind him, he said merely, "You know better than that, Elle."

Prying her fingers from their death-grip on the handle over her door, she turned to stare at him. "Yeah, well, you know me."

"Indeed I do, which is why _you_," he said conversationally, "are going to fix this mess."

She didn't say anything at that proclamation, but wondered worriedly what he was planning. Soon enough they were back on the street where Gray & Sons stood, and she saw Gabriel himself just as he turned the far corner with their mystery woman. Noah parked illegally in front of a fire hydrant, farther from the watchmaker's shop than before, and turned to look at her. "Time to get out," he said.

"What do you want me to _do_, Bennet?" She goggled at him, unable to keep the incredulity from her voice.

"I want you to follow them, Elle," he said slowly, as though speaking to a particularly dim child. "I want to know whatever you learn. License plate numbers, an address, a name if we're lucky. Everything you can."

Elle opened her door and hurriedly jumped out, but froze as Noah began speaking again. "Before a building is imploded," he said, "the entirety of it's structural integrity must first be analyzed so the workers know just where to put the explosives for maximum effect."

He looked pointedly at Elle. "Learn where to put the explosives."

**A/N: Questions will be answered, I swear. Eventually.**


	4. Chapter 4

Claire inserted her key into her front door, jiggling it to get it in the lock. It was an old lock, and stiff, and only slid open with the proper application of force. The snap it made when the deadbolt released echoed down the corridor. Pressing down on the latch with both thumbs, she threw almost her whole weight down on it before she heard/felt the tell-tale click, then thrust her knee into the wood below and shoved. The wood groaned in protest before giving way; it had rained recently, and the added moisture tended to make the door stick even worse.

Finally she swung it open. Stepping over the threshold, she held the door open for her guest, gesturing him in. Gabriel Gray regarded her with a raised eyebrow, eyes flicking from the door and back to her.

She shrugged, smiling easily. "It keeps all but the hardiest thieves out."

"It seems to keep you out, too," he replied.

She chuckled. "It does tend to annoy when I have my arms full of groceries, but I wouldn't feel right bothering Mrs. Venetti about something so insignificant. Are you coming in, would you prefer we talk on the doorstep?"

Starting ever so slightly, he stepped inside, cautiously peering into her apartment with ill-diguised curiosity. Shutting the door behind him, she deposited her purse on the small console to her right and ushered him further in. "Welcome to my hidey-hole," she said, swinging her arm to encompass her surprisingly spacious living room. A couch squatted along one wall opposite an overstuffed library, and a large, squashy armchair was burrowed into the far corner. What seemed to be a mint-condition antique Sheraton coffee table graced the center space, and a large potted tree was tucked beside the couch in a patch of late-afternoon sun.

He turned to look back at her, puzzlement written across his face. "Do you live here by yourself?"

Claire raised her eyebrows, her mouth quirking in amusement. "It doesn't seem proper, my telling you something so personal as that, now does it?"

Gabriel blushed a most fetching shade of red. "I just meant--ah, this is a very nice apartment. You seem... young," he finished awkwardly.

Claire let out a deep belly laugh, startling him. The bell-tone of her laughter filled the apartment with its bold ring before it faded. If anything her outburst made Gabriel look more confused, so she decided to throw him a bone. "I'm older than I look," she said lightly, still smiling broadly, "and I've been fortunate with the stock market."

Her answer didn't seem to satisfy him, but he kept silent and continued his perusal.

His eyes were immediately snagged by the grandfather clock standing proud against the wall.

"That--that's not a Benét grandfather clock, is it?" He asked, almost breathless. "They're very rare, late 18th century, uncommonly good craftsmanship. I've never seen one this well preserved!" He stepped up to inspect it, and gently began running his hands up the sides of the case, Claire temporarily forgotten.

"I'll leave you two to get acquainted," Claire quipped as she moved to the kitchen to boil water for tea. She pulled out her kettle and, filling it with water from a filter she had in the fridge, set it on the stove to heat. Then she pulled up a dining room chair to the refrigerator, climbed atop it, and reached for her pride and joy: her mother's porcelain tea set, carefully protected through the centuries. It had barely made it out of the Chicago Fire; her grandfather's clock, fortunately, had been in her own house in a safe part of town, but she had leant the tea set to a friend, and she had been right in the path of the fire. Claire shuddered and turned her thoughts away from that period of history.

Looking at the digital clock on the microwave, she saw that it was almost 5 o'clock, nearly time to begin suppertime preparations. Setting the tray holding the tea set carefully on her dining room table, she turned back to the parlor to invite her guest to eat.

"Gabriel, would you care--" She stopped in her tracks, surprised by what she saw. Gabriel was standing almost flush with her grandfather clock, his nose mere centimeters from the glass case, and his eyes fixed intently on the face. His hands had crept up to press against either side of the hood.

They stood like that for almost a minute, Gabriel completely oblivious to Claire's presence, before the clock itself interrupted the moment by chiming the hour. Gabriel pulled himself out of his... trance, shook his head slightly, and stepped back. He caught Claire watching him out of the corner of his eye, and blushed ferociously. Claire half-wondered whether his head had ever caught fire; his face certainly looked hot enough to combust. He cleared his throat awkwardly, and shoved his hands into his pockets.

Claire swallowed the laugh that tried to force it's way out at his discomfiture. She merely raised her eyebrows and tilted her head just so, hopefully encouraging him to venture forth and spill the beans himself.

"It's ah, running six minutes slow," he said, and pushed his glasses higher up his nose as he stared at the floor. "That tends to happen when you get pieces this old, they don't hold time as easily." He cleared his throat again, glancing bashfully up at her through his lashes.

"Maybe I should call a watchmaker," Claire teased gently, and avoided thinking about how well his statement about clocks applied to people, too.

He ducked his head and chuckled softly. Not quite aware she was moving, she walked up to the clock, closer to Gabriel, and laid her hand on the mahogany case. "This was my grandfather's clock," she said, unthinking, lost in the memories. "I remember him fitting in the pulley for the weights, and putting that gold filigree in the face."

She felt a sudden change in the atmosphere, and looking over at Gabriel, she saw anger crawling through his eyes. "Gabriel? What is it?" she asked, cursing her loose tongue.

"Don't lie to me," he snarled.

"I didn't--"

"There is no way your grandfather made this clock, it's over 200 years old!" He was almost vibrating in anger. "It's a _Benét_! Unless your grandfather is moonlighting as a forger, you're lying!"

Claire paled, shocked by the sudden change in this seemingly meek watchmaker. She reminded herself that she knew almost nothing about him; in the name of all that was holy he had just tried to _hang_ himself--he could be severely mentally unstable for all she knew. And she had just blithely welcomed him into her house. She backed away slowly, raising her hands to fend him off if need be.

Gabriel started pacing, the relentless energy that fueled his steps stoking his anger until it reached a fever pitch and, with a sudden jerk of his arm, the vase of flowers resting on the coffee table and _nowhere near him_ flew into the wall, shattering and spilling glass, water and irises all over the couch. Claire swore she saw a savage pleasure flit across his handsome features, but then it vanished.

He froze, stunned for a moment, then whirled to look at her, eyes wide and face pale, bled of anger. Claire did not look at him, she stared at the remains of the vase, trying to process what had happened. Her eyes flicked to Gabriel. _Could it be?_ Her mind stuttered. _Could it be I'm not..._

"I'm_ sorry_," he whispered, then all but ran for the door. He had wrestled it open by the time Claire found her voice.

"Gabriel, wait." He froze again, knuckles white against the doorknob.

Claire waited until he had turned to look her in the eye, the fear of God writ in his own.

"Gabriel," she said again, "shut the door. We need to talk." She turned back into the kitchen, avoiding looking at him, avoided thinking. The kettle was whistling, so she pulled it off the burner and turned off the heat. Turning to her tea set, she lifted the lid off the teapot, inserted the strainer, then poured in a handful of tea leaves. Retrieving the kettle, she poured the boiling water over the leaves, returned it to the stove, and placed the lid back on the teapot. She covered the pot with her tea cosy then, taking a deep breath, turned to face Gabriel.

He stood in the doorway, anxiety twining through his lean frame. They stood like that for a while, staring at each other with wide eyes. He fiddled nervously with the crease in his slacks.

Claire couldn't quite decide what to say, so she let her manners, carefully drilled into her for centuries, take over. Gesturing toward the steeping tea, she said, "Please, sit." Reluctantly, he did as she asked, perching stiffly on the edge of the closest chair and looking for all the world like he was ready to bolt.

Claire overturned two teacups and set them on their respective saucers, filled the milk and sugar bowls, and placed out two spoons. The familiar ritual soothed her nerves, and allowed her to begin processing what she had just witnessed.

Before long the tea was ready. Claire removed the cosy and lifted the teapot, deftly pouring two cups without spilling a drop. Setting it down, she turned to Gabriel. "Would you care for any sugar or milk?"

He looked at her like she had just asked him if the sky was yellow. "Why are you being so nice?" He burst out. "Why haven't you just kicked me out?"

Claire sighed deeply before sitting down. "Nothing is more important than hospitality and simple courtesy, Gabriel. I refuse to treat you poorly, regardless of what you do. Drink your tea." He obediently picked up his cup, but did not drink yet. She raised her own cup to her lips.

Gabriel seemed to muster himself during the ensuing silence as she sipped. "Yes, about that..." he began, then paused before continuing. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have snapped at you like that. It wasn't appropriate."

Claire noticed the sidestep. She let it pass anyway. "No it wasn't," she said, "but neither was it entirely unwarranted. For one, you recently tried to commit suicide. Your emotional state is not precisely stable at the moment." She ignored his wince and pressed on. "Further, I made some highly suspect claims, by normal standards."

His eyes zeroed in on her, sensing that Something Big was forthcoming, but Claire headed that train off at the pass. "That, however, is a conversation for later. Now, we will discuss you." She sat back and waited for him to decide where to start.

Gabriel dropped his gaze into his teacup. "I--" he started, but cut himself off. He took a deep breath and began again. "I have a kind of a power... Um. An ability, it's--out of the ordinary." Claire nodded him on, hope curling in her belly despite her best efforts to squelch it.

Rather than continue his explanation, he looked around the kitchen for some way to demonstrate. Finally he settled on the teacup in his hands, and placed it on the table before him, staring at it intently. Claire tensed, recalling all too well the fate of her vase. Her fears were allayed when all it did was move jerkily across the tabletop, clattering and sloshing tea about. That was more than enough, however, to send goosebumps rippling up her arms and to catch her breath in her throat.

Finally he stopped, squeezing his eyes shut before opening them to look at her. They were wide and vulnerable, yet hopeful.

Claire gaped at him, utterly amazed, but as it sank in, she felt the corners of her mouth lift into an enormous grin. She felt like her face was about to split in two, but she couldn't help herself. _I'm not alone!_ her heart cried, joyfully.

"Gabriel, that was amazing," she whispered.

His answering smile was so bright, Claire swore it could have powered half the borough. Claire wished she could bask in it forever.


	5. Chapter 5

Claire sat in her pew, only half-listening to the deacon. She had been a devout Anglican (and now Episcopalian) for as long as she could remember, and while she normally paid rapt attention to services, she had more things swirling around in her head than usual that morning. The night before had been consumed with Gabriel and his power; she hadn't really been able to process everything, it had been too much too fast. And after Gabriel had left she had fallen asleep almost immediately.

So here she was, woolgathering her way during the sermon. Two things were at the forefront of her mind.

First: she was not the only gifted person in the world. She couldn't express how happy that revelation made her; she had always known that God had given her this gift for a reason, but that had not stopped her from feeling isolated. Not only was she alone by virtue of her power, but she was also alone because there was no one left alive who could understand it.

Until now. And not only did that person understand it, he shared the burden with her--yet she still did not share the secret of her own power. This led her to her second concern.

She was growing attached Gabriel. She knew the warning signs, it was not the first time. In her first life she had deliberately held people away from her, seeing herself only in terms of her power and their lack, and letting that barricade her away from hurt.

She had quickly discovered that no wall could keep her from hurt.

Eventually, as years went by, she found that she _couldn't_ remain isolated. She craved any kind of contact, if it meant easing her crushing loneliness. That in itself had resulted in more than a little heartbreak.

All in all she had been married three times, and had had several more lovers. In each of those relationships she had long outlived her partner. She had watched three men she loved succumb either to wounds or to time, with not even the dubious comfort of their children to console her through her grief. She read the obituaries of men she hadn't thought of in years on a depressingly regular basis, realizing that she would probably remember them far longer than their own family.

Gabriel would be no different, yet just like all the others before him she couldn't stop herself. There was something so... vulnerable about him. Something that seemed in limbo, in flux, as though one push in the wrong direction and he would be lost. It made her think of an old photograph she had seen once, of a tightrope walker balanced between two buildings, high above the safety of the ground. She had thought that man had been insane, that he must have a death-wish to willingly step out onto such a hazardous path (ironic, she knew, coming from her and all her suicide attempts), but now that she had met Gabriel, she knew he was that tightrope walker, and it had not been the path he would have chosen.

Nevertheless, he was on it, and she sensed that he seemed unable, or, god forbid, unwilling, to step forward off the wire, seduced by vertigo into testing his resolve against the ground.

Claire shook her head, not sure where _that_ thought had come from, yet it stuck to her. There _was_ something else about Gabriel, though. Something else he hadn't told her.

It was in the way he had stared at her grandfather's clock, and the way his darker emotions had surfaced so quickly afterwards. It was in the way he had looked when he threw the vase against the wall, and the way he seemed to look straight through her to the brain behind, as though trying to puzzle out some great mystery before shaking himself out of it. And his words after his suicide attempt, _he had something I wanted, and I took it at a terrible price_...

_I've always been drawn to difficult men_, she thought exasperatedly to herself, thinking of her third husband, _but this really tops the lot_. With that, she sank into her memories.

This happened every now and then. Some situation, some food or a book title, sometimes a person, reminded her of her lengthy past, and she plunged into a blue funk of memories. She supposed she was somewhat like the elderly in that respect, who were always recalling the golden years of life more clearly the further away from them they got, but Claire had had nothing but golden years for precisely 249 years, and they only grew in volume the older she got. She had been known to sit at her window for days at a time, just remembering and wallowing in self-pity, until something pulled her out of it.

Absently she got up for communion, walked down the nave to the altar, but all she could think was that it wasn't as nice as her first church, with the simple, whitewashed boards and the unassuming cross on the far wall. Or that chapel in Taos, with the stark mountain backdrop to the humble adobe walls. Even the mighty cathedral in Washington D.C., where modern sound-systems were needed to carry the preacher's voice to the furthest, but whose organ carried clear as a bell regardless of where you sat.

She watched the processional, bowed when the cross passed, and acknowledged the blessing, but remained in her pew for a while longer. She supposed she prayed, but it wasn't like she hadn't prayed the same prayers before. God probably had a special closet where he stuffed all her prayers, endlessly repeated until they burst through the door and He had to toss them out just so he could get to his sock drawer.

Finally she stood and walked out into the warm, early autumn air, but she didn't feel it. She felt the bitter cold of winters past, and of the sweltering heat of Virginia in July. She smelt ocean breezes mixing with harbor water, not the sharp scent of asphalt and exhaust.

She walked down the street on autopilot, not really caring that the distance to her apartment was far longer than comfortable for a walk.

It was one of those days.

***

Elle tagged along behind her at a discreet distance, although by the looks of things that distance was unnecessary. She had a feeling she could walk right next to the woman and she wouldn't even notice.

She was confused about that, to be perfectly honest. The woman (she still hadn't figured out her name, and wasn't _that_ annoying) had seemed so lively the day before, for all that she had been seriously cramping Elle's style. Now she was... a walking zombie. Or something. A marionette, living out the actions of daily life. It was damn eerie, thank you very much.

She cursed Bennet again. He got the exciting job, finding out all her intimate little secrets until he found something useful. Something he could hold over her. Elle had wanted to be the one holding the smoking gun against her pretty, blonde head, not Bennet.

Instead she was following her, watching her go to church like a good little girl and walk home in a trance. Wee.

***

Claire trudged up the stairs to the main door into her apartment building. She put her key in the lock and turned it so she could enter. She shut the door quietly behind her before walking past the rows of mailboxes, tried to walk past her landlady, Mrs. Venetti, but the blasted woman wasn't having it that day. She stopped and shifted her position to better seem attentive to her words.

"Claire--good heavens, child, are you all right?" Mrs. Venetti was 52 years old, and perfectly justified in thinking that Claire was half her age instead of five times older. She didn't mind.

"Yes, Mrs. Venetti, I'm fine. I'm just feeling a little under the weather." That was a good response. She was after all, wasn't she?

"If you say so..." Her landlady squinted at her, as though trying to parse out Claire's thoughts.

"You wished to speak with me?" Claire prompted politely.

The floodgates opened. "Right, yes. Well, I was minding my own business, you know, when I heard your door being opened--I don't know why you keep that door the way it is, dearie, anytime you want the lock replaced, just holler, don't know why I haven't done it before--anyway, I heard your door opening, which was odd, seeing as how I _knew_ you had just gone to church. So I poke my head out the door, just curious, mind you, and there's this _man_ trying to get in! Big fellow, taller than that handsome young thing you brought over yesterday--" she injected a salacious wink at Claire before continuing her onslaught, "--had real old fashioned glasses on, too. Anyhow I ask him who he is, after all I've never seen him around before, and ask what he wants with you. He says, 'Claire? I'm her uncle, I just wanted to see her. We've been out of touch for a while.' I says 'I don't remember Claire ever talking about an uncle, before.' he says, 'we had an argument a while back, and I decided it was time to mend some bridges.' I says to him, 'not now you won't be, she's at church for at least another hour and a half.' He goes all 'I see, my error,' and so on and so on, then makes some noise about coming back later to see you then." She finally stopped to take a breath.

"I don't know, Claire, but that man gave me the willies."

Claire perked up slightly at this rant. The man outside Gabriel's shop had been tall, and had worn 'real old fashioned' glasses, too. What if they were the same? What would that mean for her? For Gabriel? She felt the fog clearing away as unpleasant tingles trailed down her spine.

She thanked Mrs. Venetti, assured her that she did not, in fact, have an uncle who matched that man's description, and not to let him in again. Mrs. Venetti looked positively excited. Claire supposed it must be boring, being a landlady.

Moving past, she headed toward her door. She looked at it, almost for the first time, with the realization that that door had been the only reason someone hadn't been able to get in earlier that day. Her flippant comment to Gabriel yesterday about thieves seemed a little less funny, all of a sudden.

As she rammed her way in, she patted the door, saying, "I'm never getting rid of you. You did good."


	6. Chapter 6

The motel was the standard roadside Holiday Inn, replete with all its mass-produced, impersonal attention to detail. It suited the Company's purposes perfectly. Elle slid the key card into the lock and pushed open the door when it flashed to green.

Inside, the roomed looked an absolute train wreck. There was a large hole in the TV, and the remains of an ashtray lay scattered below a suspicious looking dent in the wall. Papers were scattered willy-nilly across both beds and the floor, some them crumpled, and all manner of gadgetry, from wire-cutters to sniper scopes, lay scattered along every horizontal surface--aside from the chair that Bennet sat in, completely absorbed in the laptop before him.

He only got this way when something... _interesting_ happened. Elle was almost hesitant to ask what he'd found, but her curiosity got the better of her, so she bit.

"What did you _find_ in there?" She queried.

Bennet didn't even look away from the screen as he answered her. "I never got in, her temperamental front door announced me to the landlady. I had to think quickly."

Well, that explained the destruction, but not why he looked so happy now.

"Then why do you look so happy now?"

"Because," Bennet said, finally looking up at Elle, his face underlit by the LED light of his monitor, "The landlady was kind enough to let slip our girl's first name. With that and her address, finding the rest was easy." With that he leaned back, stretching his arms out before him. "And she's hiding something," he said with a smile. "Something big."

The light glinted off the rim of his glasses as he reached back and rummaged through a heap of papers piled on the AC/heating unit. Pulling out a small stack, he handed it to Elle. "Read that. She's very thorough, I'll give her that, but it's the little things that get her."

Elle took the papers, puzzled. She had rarely seen Noah Bennet get this excited, and frankly, it unnerved her. The guy could be so single-minded it was scary. That and he was death in a suit, powers or no.

Thumbing through it, her eyes narrowed. "Her name is Claire Bennet?" She looked sharply at Noah.

"Coincidence," he waved it off. "It's not that uncommon a name. Comes from Latin, Benedictus. Means 'blessed'. It was quite popular in the middle ages to name your children after St. Benedict, and eventually it began to be used as a surname." He paused to fish out the coffee cup buried beside his laptop and took a sip. "My own name comes from the French variation."

Elle sometimes wondered how the hell he knew all this stuff, but it was Bennet, so she didn't bother asking. He'd probably give her some crazy zen koan instead of a straight answer. Returning to her perusal of the stack of printouts, she couldn't see what he was talking about. Everything was there, a birth certificate, school and vaccination records, a high school diploma, her driver's license, health insurance, even a photocopy of her social security card. Nothing seemed out of place.

She opened her mouth, about to say so, when she caught herself. Something was indeed missing. She wasn't sure what though--it was all kosher. Claire Bennet looked a perfectly upright, upstanding member of society. No criminal record, not even a parking ticket. She was just your average college student, albeit better behaved than most, and better heeled. Hell, she had her own apartment already.

That thought set off a dozen alarms in Elle's mind. Pushing aside a stack of papers, she sat on the nearest bed and reclined against the headboard. She flipped to Claire's background information. Her mother was Ruth, her father Thomas, both solidly middle-class. She graduated from Jefferson High School three years ago, afterwards she moved to New York to pursue her college degree.

It didn't add up. How could a middle-class family afford to keep their daughter in so nice an apartment? And if they weren't funding her, how could _Claire_ afford it? Elle was fairly certain that retail didn't pay that well. Frowning, she flipped through the packet again, looking for any clues.

It was then that it hit her: there were no pictures. Of course there was Claire's picture on her driver's license, but no baby photos, no pictures of her parents. No school photos or graduation photos. The deeper she looked, the more of that absence she saw. There were no signs of summer vacations, no mention of her grandparents, and no extra-curricular activities. Just basic facts.

It had to be a fake identity. Claire Bennet was not who she said she was. Slowly she turned her head to look at Noah. He was watching her, his trademark smirk flicking across his lips. "Dear 'Claire' is an alias." his smile widened. "I've almost cracked through to who she really is." He shifted back to the computer, getting down to business.

"But why would she adopt an alias? She's too young to have done anything."

Bennet snorted. "You're living proof that age doesn't mean much. And besides," he continued, "that's a fairly narrow cross-section of reasons for hiding one's identity. Claire might have a very... unfortunate past. A past that we can manipulate."

Silence fell over the room as Bennet continued his poking. Elle sighed and shifted on the bed.

Suddenly Bennet jerked upright, a frown darkening his features. "That's not possible," he murmured to himself. "Unless..." he stared at his screen, and a genuinely sinister smile slowly slipped across his face.

Elle tensed, eyes locked on Bennet as he snatched up his cell phone and began to furiously punch in a number. He practically fidgeted as he waited for the call to go through. Finally someone picked up the other end, and Elle found herself listening harder than she ever had in her life.

"It's Bennet," he started. He paused as the other person said something. "Actually, there's been a slight hiccup in the plan, and now we're improvising."

....

"No, she's doing fine, we haven't had any problems."

...

"No, he hasn't--"

...

"Understood, but--"

...

"I am aware of that. However, he's met someone. She saved him from his suicide attempt, and now we have to work around her."

...

"No, we got there too late."

...

"Naturally. But there's a problem, she's a regen."

...

"Oh no, she is. Trust me on that one, she is, not to mention experienced. I think we can use this to our advantage."

...

"I don't know if it's like his. I don't know anything else pertinent about her, I called when I found out."

...

"I'm _very_ much aware of that."

...

"Understood. What about Gabriel Gray?"

...

"I think that can be arranged," Bennet replied, turning to look at Elle, that signature faint smile back again. He turned back as the person on the other line continued talking. "Of course. I'll keep in touch." With that he hung up, and, tucking his phone into his belt, began to gather his gear.

"What was that about? Was it Thompson? What'd he say?" Elle jumped from question to question like a rabbit on speed, but Bennet didn't answer any of them. Turning to his laptop, he flipped it around so that she could see the picture on the screen. It was an old daguerrotype, a portrait, of a woman in Victorian garb. The image was grainy, but she could still make out the woman. It was Claire Bennet. "Part of a photographer's collection, posthumously donated to a local museum," he said.

"How--" Elle began, but Noah cut her off.

"There's been a change of plans," he said.


	7. Chapter 7

Claire made sure to shut her door firmly, and double-checked the deadbolt before tossing her keys on the console. Slowly, she made her way into the center of her living room and set her bookbag on the couch. She began to pace aimlessly, lost in her thoughts.

Once again she considered what her landlady had told her about her 'visitor' the other day. Her description of him certainly matched the man her erstwhile customer had talked to outside Gabriel's shop, but where the woman had seemed vaguely unpredictable, like an electrical cord stripped to the wires, that man had broadcasted controlled threat so strongly it unsettled her.

They were spying on Gabriel, for reasons she suspected were related to his power, and for whatever reason it seemed they had now switched to concentrate on her. Claire made it a practice to reveal neither her age nor her gift, so it couldn't be that aspect of her that intrigued them--but she wasn't sure she wanted to know what they would do when they found her out. It never went well for her when people learned of her power.

As for what she knew of the two of them, the only information she had was their descriptions and that their cover was a company called Primatech.

It was time to call Gabriel. He needed to know.

Turning into the kitchen, she picked up the scrap of paper she'd used to write down his number and, steeling herself, turned to face the telephone perched ominously on the wall. She dialed awkwardly and waited anxiously through the ringing. Finally he picked up.

"Hello?" Claire's heart gave an involuntary jump at the sound of his voice, even if it was politely neutral. She paused, mind rushing through her options, before speaking.

"Hello, Gabriel, it's me, Claire. Bennet," She added, and winced.

Gabriel didn't seem to notice her distinct lack of poise. "Claire! I'm so glad you called!"

"Yes, I, uh, I need to talk with you. It's important."

"Is everything alright?" he asked, his tone changing to sound slightly worried. "You sound different."

"I--that doesn't matter. But I need to speak with you."

"About what?"

"I'd rather not talk about it over the telephone," she said. "Would it be alright if I came over?"

She practically felt the curiosity sparking across the line, this time. "Of course, let me give you my address." Claire searched for a pen and paper and scribbled down the information he recited for her.

"I'll be there shortly," she said.

"See you soon," he replied, and she hung up. She rested her hip against the counter and glared at the phone, her cheeks burning. Oh, how she hated using that thing. An irrational fear, she knew, but she supposed she was lucky that was the only new technology she had an aversion to. Far more inconvenient to be afraid of the bus.

With that thought, she moved back into the living room. She looked briefly at her bookbag, but stepped toward the window instead. She basked for a moment in the sunlight pouring in, closing her eyes and leaning her forehead against the glass. She didn't know how to tell Gabriel she thought he might be being stalked._ "Oh, by the way, Gabe..."_ She snorted in derision at the thought. Sighing, she opened her eyes.

And looked straight down at the woman from Gabriel's shop. She was leaning casually against the wall of the small grocery store across the street, staring intently at the door to her building. Waiting. She was well-concealed from a ground-level view, but from Claire's slightly elevated position, she could see her clearly. The woman suddenly looked up at her.

Claire jerked back from the window.

She now had conclusive evidence that she, too was being followed. Looking around her apartment, the walls seemed much closer, much more restrictive, and far less protective. There were people watching her, a sensation that she, an abnormal person seeking nothing more than to live a normal life, did not like. Drawing attention was _always _unwise.

There was nothing for it, however. She was expected by... she pondered briefly what to call Gabriel in her mind. Her friend. She was expected by her friend to be at his apartment in Queens soon. She would have to venture out and hope that her stalkers didn't want to kidnap her that day.

She turned to where she had dumped her book bag on the couch and pulled out her endocrinology and organic chemistry textbooks, leaving behind her laptop and sketchbook. Then, slinging it back over her shoulder, she walked to the entryway and removed a can of mace from the console. Scant protection, but better than nothing. Slipping it into her bag, she faced her door.

_It won't be able to protect me if I'm on the other side_, she thought to herself. Taking a deep breath, she snatched her keys and stepped forward, flipped the bolt, and jerked it open. She peered out into the hallway, looking both ways before bringing the rest of her body hesitantly out, and even then it took her a moment longer to shut the door, pulling it home in the doorjamb. Then she locked it and turned toward the exit.

She kept her steps purposeful, as though she was unaware that a woman might be tailing her as soon as she left her building. Down the hall, down the steps, past the rows of mailboxes, and through the glass outer doors. She deliberately did not look to where her shadow was hiding.

She walked two blocks over, to the bus stop, and waited under the canopy. Tensely. Her eyes flickered about, trying to catch any glimpse of the woman, but she was nowhere to be seen. Claire realized she was ridiculously lucky to have seen her when she did, this woman was no slouch at her job.

Finally the bus lurched around the corner and came to a wheezing stop in front of her. She clambered aboard and inserted her pass into the fare box, then turned to face the rush-hour clutter of passengers. She picked a seat midway down the aisle, squished against a rather large black woman with a bag of groceries perched precariously in her lap. Claire slumped low in her seat, hiding behind the bulk of her seat mate, and refused to acknowledge the small voice in her head that told her she was being silly; she was in a contained vehicle on a set route--they could find her easily, whether they could see her from the outside or not. Either way, she didn't sit up straight until it came time for her to change buses.

***

She found herself in a claustrophobic hallway at 1146 Trenton Place, looking at the door to apartment 1B. She stared at the water stain on the wall to the left, and tried to decide once more how to tell him he was being watched, but as before nothing came. Sighing, she raised her hand and knocked.

There was a pause, and then she heard the scraping of a deadbolt unlocking. The door swung open (much more easily than her own), and Gabriel was there, in all his plaid-and-sweater-vested glory, standing in the doorway and looking down at her with a smile on his face.

"Claire," he said.

"Hello, Gabriel." She glanced at his neck, the bruises carefully concealed under his collar. "How are they doing?" she asked, gesturing toward her own neck.

"Oh, fine," he said quickly. "They're, uh, they're fine."

"Good," She said in return, smiling gently. She looked past him, into his apartment, before glancing back up to his face. "May I...?"

He jumped slightly and opened the door wider, inviting her in. "I--I'm glad you came, Claire," he said. "I wasn't sure if you would."

She looked at him quizzically. "Why wouldn't I?"

Gabriel's response was cut off by a sharp question from the side. "Gabriel, who is this?"

Claire spun around to face the speaker, currently poking her head around a corner. She was an older woman, about the same age as Mrs. Venetti, by Claire's best estimate. Her overwhelming impression of her was that she was brown. Her brown hair was coiled in a loose bun at the base of her skull, and her arms were folded over her brown cardigan. Her demeanor was similarly dour.

She looked at Claire with barely disguised distaste in her eye. "Introduce us, Gabriel," she said, without even looking at him.

"I... Claire, this is my mother, Virginia Gray. Mom, this is... this is Claire..."

Claire stepped in, holding her hand out to Gabriel's mother. "Claire Bennet, ma'am. Gabriel and I met the other day, I'm somewhat of a hobbyist when it comes to timepieces, and I happened to come across and antique grandfather clock I felt needed restoring." The lie came out easily, and she paused to flick a smile in Gabriel's direction. "Gabriel was the best man for the job."

Virginia Gray ignored the proffered hand. She missed neither Claire's quick smile, nor the way her son perked up under it. "Why did you come here?" she demanded instead. "You could have talked with him at the shop."

"Mom, the shop is closed," Gabriel reminded softly. "I told her she could come here."

"Why didn't you have her come by earlier, Gabriel, when the shop was still open?"

"I have classes during the day, Mrs. Gray," Claire supplied. "I'm studying biochemistry at NYU."

Her brown eyes locked back on Claire, sizing her up anew. "You are much too young for him," she declared. "He's not rich, if that's what this is about, I'll say that right now. Not through want of encouragement however." Claire felt her jaw drop open at the insinuation.

"Mom, please," Gabriel almost whispered, humiliation burning its way across his pale cheeks. "It's not like that."

"What, Gabriel? You think pretty girls will throw themselves at your feet? No. You're just a watchmaker, but you could be so much _more_!" Gabriel ducked his head to look at his feet.

Claire had had enough. "Mrs. Gray," she said, her voice grim, "I'm not sure where you came to your conclusions, but let me assure you they are wrong. Gabriel and I are in no way involved other than professionally as two connoisseurs of clockwork. I am not interested in his money, and why you would think so little of your own son is quite beyond me."

Claire watched as Mrs. Gray appeared to swell with indignation. "How _dare_ you--" she began, but was cut off by Gabriel.

"Mother. Leave." His words were soft, and he was still looking at his feet, but his tone was steel.

Virginia gaped. "Gabriel, this--"

He looked up at her, his expression torn. "Mom, please."

She closed her mouth, shot an angry glare at Claire, then walked toward the door. She opened it, and before walking out, said to her son, "I'll see you next Sunday, Gabriel." He nodded, not looking at her. With that she sent one more poisonous glance at Claire before shutting the door behind her.

The apartment rang with silence after she left. Claire let out a breath. "Well," she said.

Gabriel glanced up at her before returning his gaze to rest firmly on the floor before him. "Claire, I'm s--"

Claire's hand shot out to lay her index finger across his lips. "Don't say it Gabriel," she said as his head jerked up to look at her, his eyes wide. "Don't apologize for your mother's behavior. You aren't responsible for how she acts."

He nodded slowly, surprise pouring through his eyes, and Claire lost herself gazing into them. They were brown, like his mother's, but where hers had been flat his were alive and layered, multi-hued and... beautiful. Slowly Claire noticed the sensation of his lips against her fingertip; they were soft and giving, and she could feel his warmth seeping into her skin. Heat began to spread through her chest.

She jerked her hand away, thrusting it back down to her side. This was not right. He would die, and she would be heartbroken again. She tried to distance herself from him, but her efforts were already tinged with failure. Gabriel Gray called to her like none had before, and her heart cried from the pain.

Gabriel let out a gust of air; Claire hadn't even noticed he'd been holding it. Shaking his head a little, he glanced quickly around his apartment before returning to look at Claire.

"What was it you wanted to talk about?" he asked.


	8. Chapter 8

"What was it you wanted to talk about?" Gabriel asked.

Claire didn't answer Gabriel's question right away. Rather, she unlsung her bookbag and leaned it against the wall by the door, then stepped further into his apartment, quietly examining. The front door opened, oddly, into the kitchen, and the living room was through a door to her right. It was sparsely furnished with a single chair, still covered in protective plastic, a side-table, and a glass case displaying an open book. Through an arch she saw through to his bedroom, which contained only a neatly made twin bed. The only thing in abundance was books; they were stacked floor to ceiling on shelves that covered the walls. Scanning the spines, she saw mostly instruction manuals, how-to books, and encyclopedias, though there was the occasional biography or work of fiction.

Overall, his apartment was tidy--almost painfully so--but it smelled faintly musty, like it hadn't been aired out in a long time. From the looks of the closed blinds, Claire concluded that perhaps it hadn't.

It reminded her of Gabriel himself, lonely and awkward.

She returned to the kitchen to face Gabriel, standing self-consciously in front of his refrigerator, hands in his pockets, and though she opened her mouth, trying to broach the topic of her visit, no words came out. She closed her mouth, staring at Gabriel helplessly.

"That bad, is it?" he chuckled darkly, looking around his place. "Figures, this day hasn't been the best." He turned to the cupboards. "Would you like some tea?" he called over his shoulder in a curious reversal of Saturday.

"Please," Claire responded, then went on to say, mentally kicking herself, "Your apartment is fine, Gabriel, that's not what I was trying to talk about." He half-turned to face her, pausing in pulling down two teacups, his eyebrow raised.

Claire diverted the subject. "Why was your day so bad?"

If anything his eyebrow rose higher, overshadowing the thick rim of his glasses. "That's what you wanted to talk about?" he asked incredulously.

"Ah, no," Claire said, blushing. "I... It's not an easy subject, I think I need to warm up to it. So..."

Gabriel's brow wrinkled slightly as he considered that, but a faint half-smile quickly replaced it. "All right," he said as he gathered up the materials for tea. He filled a kettle and placed it on the stove to warm, then turned to lean back against the counter, his arms crossed over his chest. He looked at the window rather than at Claire.

"There really isn't much to it, actually. I missed the bus, and had to catch a taxi to get to the shop in time to open it for an early appointment. Then I had two customers who were more than a little irritating, I just wanted to _strangle_ them at one point. Then an order got mangled, leaving me with three balance springs and one quartz crystal, rather than three crystals and one spring. After that..." he paused, sighing and shifting his gaze to the floor. "Just a bunch of little things that piled up. You know, stubbing toes, dropping things, inconveniently timed bills."

He finally looked at her. "Then you called," he said softly, and his expression seemed indefinably brighter, though he didn't smile. Then it faded. "And I know you said not to, but still--I'm sorry about my mom. She came over after I hung up, she tends to do that--just show up."

"Gabriel, it's alright. We all get embarrassed by family, that's what family does." She had to admit her family had never accused her of inappropriate behavior with so little provocation, or been so rude to one of her friends, but she kept that thought to herself.

The kettle whistled into the sudden quiet, and Gabriel turned around to pull it off the burner. Then he put two tea bags into the cups, then poured hot water over them. Setting aside the kettle he picked up the tea and brought it to the small table pushed against the wall, setting the cups down gently on the polished, worn wood. He gestured for Claire to sit down, which she did, and sat down himself opposite her.

They were silent a few moments longer, looking everywhere but at each other, before Gabriel spoke again. "Actually, there was another thing about today." He shifted forward in his seat, looking inwardly, a puzzled frown on his face. "I've been noticing this van hanging around for the past few days, it's for a paper company I think, and seeing it today just annoyed me, but I didn't really think about it till now." His eyes focused on Claire. "I had the strangest thought that it was following me."

Claire felt her heart sink into the pit of her stomach. "Was the van marked 'Primatech'?" she asked heavily.

"Yes! Primatech, that was the name!" Gabriel exclaimed, smiling briefly. "How did you know?"

Claire sighed. "Because I saw that van outside your shop the day we met, and I was given to believe that it's occupants were spying on you. It's..." she trailed off before picking up again. "It's what I wanted to talk to you about."

Gabriel froze. "Spying..." he whispered. "_Why?_" he demanded next.

Claire held her palms out. "I don't know. All I know is that the customer I helped after I cut you down was no customer. She went to that van after I refused to let her see you, and talked to a man hiding inside. They had a disagreement and drove off." She hesitated, then finished. "I think they are watching you because of your power."

Gabriel turned sheet white at this pronouncement. His breath started coming shallower, and his fingers gripped the edge of the table until the blood was squeezed out of them. "Gabriel?" Claire asked tentatively. "Are you...?"

He stood abruptly and moved away, toward the window. She could hear him muttering to himself, but she couldn't quite catch the words. Slowly she pushed back her chair and stood, then stepped closer to him.

"...but how could they _know?_ I didn't have any visible power until--surely they weren't watching me _before_ then, were they? But why..."

Claire reached out and brushed her fingers against his shoulder. "Gabriel?" He jumped and pulled away at her touch, his eyes wide like a feral animal's caught in a trap. Then he visibly calmed himself down, flicking his eyes demurely down and to the side.

Shocked by his response, Claire reached out to him again, but didn't quite make contact. "Gabriel," she said more firmly. "Tell me what is wrong."

"No."

It took a moment for that to enter Claire's brain. "I... I beg your pardon?"

"We've talked enough about me. I want to know some things about you," he said, dark eyes strangely intense. "Such as why you claimed your grandfather made a 200-year-old clock."

Claire floundered. This was a turn she had not expected the conversation to take; she had intended to tell him only of the surveillance, not to divulge the full nature of her past. She gaped at Gabriel. He stared back at her, his chin tilted obstinately.

He _had_ showed her _his_ power... Maybe it was a time for a show of faith.

At that thought she shut her mouth and turned to walk back to her chair. She sat, collecting her thoughts as she removed the tea bag from her cup and placed it in the saucer, then took a sip.

"I am far older than I appear to be," she said by way of preamble, then lapsed into thought for a moment.

"If you think I'll settle for--" Gabriel began, indignation coloring his voice, but Claire cut him off.

"I wasn't finished speaking, Gabriel, I was putting my thoughts in order. This is no easier for me to say than your own secrets are for you." She sat calmly, staring into the near distance, her rebuke softly spoken.

Gabriel ducked his head in apology, his forcefulness forgotten in the face of her acquiescence. He moved to sit opposite Claire. She could feel the intensity of his listening in the air as surely as she felt the weight of his gaze on her face.

"I am far older than I appear to be," she said again. "You have a power, Gabriel; I, too, was blessed with a strange gift." She looked steadily at him, but did not really see him. "I heal from any wound inflicted upon me, even from the ravages of time."

She did not see the way he stiffened in his chair, or the the sudden avarice that kindled in his eye at her words.

"I look to be around 17 years of age because that is how old I was when my power manifested. Ever since then I have been essentially invulnerable. Poisons, falls, being burned, crushed--nothing could kill me, I'd just regenerate."

An almost pained look overcame Gabriel's expression, as though he were being pulled in two directions, and little beads of sweat broke out across his brow.

"I thought it was a miracle at first, a gift from God, and I saw only the good in it. But as the years went by, and my family, my mother, my father, my grandfather and brothers, even my husband, grew old and died, I saw the true agony of it. It's a gift, to be sure--but it's also a heavy burden.

"I was born in 1761, Gabriel, in the midst of the French and Indian War. I was 15 when the Colonies declared their independence from England, and 27 when the Constitution was finally ratified. I was 100 years old when the Civil War began on my birthday, 102 when my second husband died at the Battle of Chancellorsville."

Gabriel seemed to vibrate in his chair, his hands clasped around each other in a death grip before him on the table. Jerkily he pulled them into his lap.

Claire continued her recitation. It was like a lanced wound, and she wept the secret poisoning her. "I was 153 when America entered the War to End All Wars, and 180 when we entered the _Second_ World War, barely even 30 years later. I heard the Gettysburg Address in person, and FDR's speech after Pearl Harbor over the radio. I worked as a nurse in the Spanish Influenza epidemic, and I remember watching JFK's assassination on TV.

"Those are just some of the major events, Gabriel," she said. "There are so many more, major and minor, and I remember them with perfect clarity because my power does not let my memory fade from age."

With that she sighed deeply, the flow of words stemmed for the moment, and she slumped against the back of her chair, resting her head back to look at the ceiling. She felt drained. She had never told anyone this much before, and it felt good to finally let it out. It was then that she realized her audience had been unusually silent throughout her speech, and she tilted her head forward to look at him.

What she saw made her sit up abruptly. Gabriel had a hand in the air, not quite reaching toward her, and the expression of pure hunger on his face seared her to her soul and left her terrified.

"Gabriel?" She asked warningly, eyeing his his raised hand. She avoided making any sudden moves, for fear of unintentionally forcing his hand.

He began to stand, agonizingly slowly, staring at her with that terrible _wanting_ in his eye, and she felt herself shrink. "Gabriel, what are you doing?" She said softly, her voice wavering. She didn't think whatever he would do would actually kill her, nothing had yet, but then, getting raped hadn't actually killed her, either.

That thought decided her. She was tired of fighting all the time, she was tired of constantly trying to make a life when her own _life_ made it impossible. She didn't know what Gabriel Gray wanted from her, but he was, well, not _welcome_ to it, but.

She sighed and slumped back in her chair, looking up at him. "Just do... it," she said vaguely, waving her hand for emphasis. "Get it over with."

Gabriel froze at those words, arm half-outstretched, fingers twitching, and she watched as tension coiled up his body--almost in visible waves--before he snapped his arm back to his side and spun to face the window. He gripped the window frame until his knuckles turned white, his head hung low between his shoulders. He was gasping for breath like a marathon runner, and Claire could see him trembling.

They maintained the tableau for countless moments before Gabriel finally broke it.

"Telekinesis is not really my power," he said shakily, raising his head to stare unseeing through the slats in the blinds. "My power is..." he seemed to grasp for words. "My power is subtler," he finished inadequately.

Claire felt as though she was listening with every fiber of her body to his words. Her musings about the tightrope walker flared bright in her mind, and she had a nasty feeling that Gabriel's drop was much farther than she had guessed.

He continued on. "This power... it's like an addiction. I desire, I _covet_, the powers of others." he gave a broken sigh before releasing his grip and turning halfway away from the window, his right palm still pressed against the wood of the post. "I can't really control it; I encounter a power, my power prods me to _know_, to _figure it out_. To become special. And once I learn how a power works I can... steal it, I suppose you could say."

"You kill them," Claire said flatly, thinking of his words in his shop. She understood, now, why he had tried to hang himself.

Gabriel twitched. "Yes," he whispered, closing his eyes briefly against the sight of his drab cabinets. Then they opened and he suddenly spun around to face Claire, a pleading expression on his face. "But I don't want to!" he cried. "I don't want to hurt anyone, but the need to understand how they work is overwhelming, I don't have a choice!"

Claire stood slowly, keeping Gabriel in her sight as she backed away from him. "There is always a choice, Gabriel," she said. "And I'm going to try and show it to you, God help me."

"Claire, you don't underst--"

"Gabriel." Her voice lashed through his sentence, catching him up short. She looked up at him from across the kitchen, saw his stricken face, and moderated her tone. "I didn't say I knew how. I don't. I don't even know if I'm sane for volunteering to do this, given what you just told me, but as the only person I know who can't die, I would say I'm the best person for the job." She chuckled bitterly. "I would say I'm the only person for the job."

He took a step toward her, and she moved back so quickly she ran into the door, her hands up in the air between them. "Don't... come any closer," she said gently. "Please." His expression at this statement was, in a word, anguished. She could see the self-recrimination roiling through his eyes, and through her own distress her heart twisted in her chest.

"Come to my apartment tomorrow at 5 o'clock," she said, and he nodded helplessly. With that, she scooped up her bag and fled his apartment, leaving nothing but the memory of her voice.

***

She didn't feel her reaction until she woke up in the middle of the night, curled up in a ball and shaking like a leaf in the breeze.

**A/N: Sorry for taking so long folks, this past week I was on a choir trip to the SWACDA convention in Denver. Our choir kicked ass, yuppers. =) Anyway, here's the next chapter, and as always: reviews are love.**


	9. Chapter 9

Gabriel Gray stared down at the movement before him, the tiny cogs and springs it held exposed and vulnerable between his hands. Although he had been staring at it for the past 15 minutes, he was no closer to fixing it than he had when he had diagnosed it, precisely 33 seconds after he had received it one hour previously.

If truth be told, he wasn't really seeing the mechanism before him. He saw instead Claire Bennet, the easy and cheerful and... _knowing_... expression she usually wore pulled tight with fear, her green eyes huge and limpid as they gazed at him. Like prey.

Gabriel abruptly shook himself, hoping to drive out that last thought. This was _Claire_ he was thinking about, not some useless fool without enough brilliance to use her power properly. She had saved his life, she had told him he was special. She wanted to see him again, even after... what happened.

And yet.

Claire Bennet, by all rights, should be dead. She wasn't, however, and Gabriel was, to be perfectly, brutally, honest, hard-pressed to explain why. She hadn't even _demonstrated_ her power, merely spoken of it, and the hunger had consumed him. Her power had drawn him to her so quickly it took his breath away, his curiosity zooming off and leaving his more rational parts choking in the dust.

That scared him.

That scared him more than he wanted to admit. He was filled with many fears these days, it seemed: the fear of being average, of being nothing special--but that had been with him for longer than he could remember. Then there was the fear of the Primatech van, and what Claire said it meant, and what that could mean for his life. But neither of those fears compared to the fear he felt toward himself, of the crushing uncertainty he met with when he stopped to wonder who, exactly, Gabriel Gray was.

Was he a killer? Did he, as his mother would undoubtedly say, deserve to burn in Hell? He recalled striking down Brian Davis, and how he had thrust aside the disgust of what he was doing because of the strength of his want, and his need. He recalled the fierce joy he felt upon discovering he had Davis' power, that _he_ was the special one, that _he_ was the ultimate fruit of evolution and not that mewling child too afraid to recognize his power for the gift it was.

Gabriel couldn't seem to reconcile the devastation that act had wrought upon his soul with the balm it had placed on it elsewhere. It ate him inside; how could something so reprehensible be so good?

And now he wanted to include Claire's death into those musings. He shivered, in hungering horror, and he _knew_, with a strength that he couldn't quantify, that the high of acquiring her power wouldn't outweigh the burden on his guilt.

Gabriel was wedged between the metaphorical rock and hard place, caught between the maw of his hunger on one side and the sharp, biting edge of his conscience on the other. Collateral damage.

He stared down at the watch on his workbench, as though it held all the answers he needed, and if he just looked at it hard enough he could learn them and end his torment of confusion.

His contemplation was interrupted by the tinkling of the bell over the door, signaling the entrance of a customer. Starting, Gabriel carefully tucked the open watch off to the side and rose from his chair. He stepped around the clutter of order forms and receipt tape and into the front of the shop.

His customer was a man, a few inches taller than himself, with close-cropped hair and horn-rimmed glasses. He looked older, perhaps his late forties, and was trim under his crisply tailored suit. He looked to be everything Gabriel was not--powerful, confident, self-assured. He was eyeing an antique mantle clock resting atop a cabinet, fantastically wrought fauns and nymphs in marble cavorting around the face.

"Hello," Gabriel began. "Can I help you?"

"I certainly hope so," the man said, straightening and turning to face Gabriel in one smooth movement. He pulled out an old pocket watch and dangled the case from its tarnished chain. "I found this while cleaning out the attic, and I was wondering if it could be repaired."

Gabriel fell into the familiar role of watchmaker, shoving aside the twinge of unease he felt toward this man. "If I may?" he asked, gesturing toward the timepiece suspended from his customer's fingers.

"Of course," the man replied, and deposited the piece in Gabriel's palm.

Gabriel at first just held the watch, hefting its surprising weight, experiencing the textures he found under his fingertips. The case was silver, slightly tarnished, but still beautiful. The sharp edges of the etching on the cover were worn smooth by many fingers, and though the outline was faint, he could still make out the stylized design of interlaced ferns.

Then he felt for the faint movements of its insides, and he could tell right away they were curiously off-balance. Holding the case up to his ear, he listened to the ticking. It galloped, but not at a steady pace, like a metronome placed on a slanted surface--rather it sounded like that metronome were on a sea-going ship in the middle of a typhoon, gaining and losing tempo at irregular rates. It was the strangest thing he had ever heard coming from a watch.

Taking a deep breath, he turned to his customer. "This watch is in very bad condition," he said, stifling the indignation he felt at its obvious mistreatment. "I'm surprised it still functions."

His customer didn't react to this statement, but Gabriel thought he saw a trace of amusement flicker through those sharp, blue eyes. "It's had a rough life," the man said. "one too many knocks, and not enough attention paid to it."

Gabriel nodded. That was nothing new, with watches as old as these. "I may have to hold it overnight so I can diagnose it," he said. "I'll call you with an estimate once I've opened the movement and isolated the problem."

"All right," the man said. "Let me give you my cell." he rattled it off as Gabriel scribbled it down on an order slip.

"May I have your name?" Gabriel asked.

"Noah Bennet," his customer supplied.

Gabriel's head jerked up. "'Bennet'?" he asked.

"Yes, Bennet, one 't'," the man said. "Why do you ask?"

"I... It's--I know someone else named Bennet," Gabriel mumbled, embarrassed. Why had his thoughts jumped immediately to Claire? It was just a name. He tried to tamp down the feelings of apprehension and excitement he felt about tonight. This was work, he shouldn't be so distracted.

His customer looked amused. "I imagine it's not that uncommon a name," he said. "Call me Noah."

"Of course, Mr. Bennet," Gabriel replied firmly.

Noah chuckled. "Have it your way." He turned to leave. "You'll call when you've figured it out, you say?" he asked.

"I'll look at it tonight, and I'll most likely call tomorrow morning," Gabriel said. His customer nodded, then moved toward the door. As he did, however, his elbow brushed against the mantle clock he had been inspecting earlier. Gabriel stood transfixed, watching it shift with the man's passing until it hovered over the edge, overbalanced, and finally tipped over. Gabriel felt the most awful tightening feeling in his stomach, and didn't think as he threw out his hands. He felt the telekinesis rocket through his body and explode from his fingertips, extending the reach of his arms just in time to catch the clock before it collided with the floor.

It hovered there, above the floorboards, unharmed, and Gabriel's mind slowly relaxed at the comforting weight of the timepiece in his "hands". Suddenly he became aware of Noah Bennet facing him, his eyes flickering between his outstretched arms and the clock, but when his eyes rose to meet his, instead of the shock and fear Gabriel expected to see in them he saw only a strange triumph. Gabriel felt the hairs on the back of his neck raise under his regard.

"Good day, Mr. Gray," the man said softly, and stepped through the door. Gabriel's joints unlocked then, and he stumbled around the counter, still gripping the clock with his power. He peered out the window for the man, Noah Bennet, but he was gone, and Gabriel had a sinking feeling he had done a very foolish thing.

***

By the time he reached Claire's apartment, Gabriel was a nervous wreck. Business had been slow, and every time he tried to work his roving mind distracted him. He hadn't even touched the watch Noah Bennet gave him. Eventually he gave up and just sat at his workbench, chasing his thoughts around in circles.

And now here he was, at Claire's, with both Claire and her power in tantalizing proximity. Gabriel sighed. It was shaping up to be a simply spectacular night.

He raised his hand up to knock, but it froze right before connecting with the wood. Already he could hear his heartbeat flushing through his ears like the ticking of a clock; what chance did she have? Why did she ask him to come? God_damn_ it, why had he demanded she tell him?!

Half against his will, Gabriel forced himself to knock. His hesitation made his knuckles stutter across the wood, and he winced. He straightened and knocked again, this time with a confidence he did not feel.

Claire opened the door promptly, clad simply in jeans and a plain white tee. She stood there, her small body framed in the doorway, and Gabriel didn't have to fight back his dark side--it was just as captivated by her as he was. Her hair... he longed to run his fingers through those golden strands, feel its texture and weight, and bury his face in it and breathe deep her smell.

Gabriel blushed heartily at his train of thought, and his embarrassment at blushing in front of Claire only made him blush harder.

Claire smiled faintly, but there was a wary, hollow look in her eye that unnerved Gabriel. She looked... _scared_. And it was because of him. He couldn't quite stifle the flare of pleasure that zinged through him at her reaction, and he felt ashamed.

She didn't say anything, just gestured him in. He entered, and followed her as she walked into her living room. Everything was more or less the way he had remembered it--the comfortable neatness, the plant in the corner, the grandfather clock against the wall. There were more textbooks scattered on the table, and he paused to quash the urge to _learn_ what they were about. _Not now_, he thought to himself. He looked everywhere but at Claire, whose presence near his left side seemed to burn a hole through his skin. He tried not to think of her power.

She was the first to break the silence. "Would you care for something to drink?" she asked softly.

Gabriel turned to face her tentatively, testing himself, but didn't meet her gaze. "No thank you," he said in reply.

"Alright," was all she said. They stood there a little while longer, until Gabriel _had_ to say something, anything, to break that heavy silence.

"You... wanted me to come over," he said, eyes fixed firmly on the floor before his feet.

"...Yes," Claire said slowly. She sounded as though she was having second thoughts about him, and though Gabriel knew that was only sane of her, he couldn't help feeling just a little bit hurt.

"I could go," he said. "I know you don't want me h--"

"Gabriel, would you please stop thinking of yourself as a bad penny?" she interrupted him quietly. "You would not be here if I did not want you to be." He pulled his head up abruptly to look down at her, and he knew his surprise was as plain as the nose on his face.

"You are always so shocked when I say something nice to you," she murmured, those bottle-green eyes clouded with puzzlement and sadness. Unthinking she reached her hand out to his cheek, but didn't quite touch. Gabriel imagined leaning into her fingers, feeling her skin against his, like he had felt it against his lips the night before, but he restrained himself before his body acted upon his daydream. Hands could just as easily slap as they could caress.

She seemed to return to herself, and she pulled her hand away. Gabriel let out a small, involuntary sigh as she did, and closed his eyes, trying to get a grip on himself.

"I've had time to think today, Gabriel," Claire said suddenly. He opened his eyes to see her standing in front of her window, her hands wrapped around herself, shoulders hunched as she gazed out. "I promised I would help you find a way to master your power." He wanted to step up and hold her, smooth the tension out of her shoulders, but she would never allow that. Not from him.

"Claire, I don't think there is a way." His hunger flared out at that statement, and he closed his eyes again, fighting it back, before he opened them. "It's stronger than you can possibly realize."

Claire whipped around, her eyes flaring. "You described it as an addiction, yes?" she demanded. "I'm a nurse, Gabriel, I've helped more than one addict break the habit. I'm not saying it's as easy as that," she continued, forestalling his protest with her raised palm, "no addict had to deal with an drug that's a part of his genes, but I'm going to try and find a way."

Gabriel stood rooted the ground, staring at her dumbly. She just didn't understand. "Claire, this isn't heroin. These are people's _lives_. This power, it makes me kill!"

Claire looked at him calmly. "We've gone over this, Gabriel. I can't be killed. And I refuse to believe your power is utterly without benefit."

"That's not the point!" he cried. "Yes, my power can be useful! It's invaluable when it comes to fixing timepieces, but Claire, people aren't _clocks_!" His voice cracked on the last word, yet he couldn't bring himself to care that he sounded like he had just entered puberty. She simply refused to _see_! And all _he_ was starting to see was her power, he could see it trailing behind her, he could smell it, he could even taste it on the back of his tongue. It was smooth and slightly bitter, like a good cup of coffee--the perfect pick-me-up.

Claire seemed to be oblivious to his distress. "...Clocks..." she murmured to herself, deep in thought. Slowly she turned to him, and she looked like she was on to something. "Gabriel," she said, "Do you remember the way you were looking at my grandfather clock on Saturday?"

"Yes," he said, irritated, "but what does that have to do with--"

"What were you thinking?"

The question threw him. "I--come again?"

"What was running through your mind as you looked at my clock?"

"I was--I was thinking it was a Benét, I was surprised by the condition it was in--"

"You didn't happen to be using your power, did you?" she asked. "After all, you gave a very precise estimate of its accuracy without ever having looked inside."

"I--" Gabriel cut himself off. He hadn't thought about it, but yes, he_ had_ been using his powers. It was just something he did. "Well yes, but--"

"If you were using your power on the clock, why didn't you want to tear it open to see how it worked?"

Gabriel goggled at her. "That--that's not the same, Claire! Clocks don't have powers!"

"No?" she said softly. "They seem fairly powerful, to me. To count time... to bring order into chaos... Why do I have to tell you this, Watchmaker?"

Gabriel merely scowled against the flushing of his cheeks and turned away. He began to pace restlessly.

"Is it because clocks have never insulted you, or hit you? That they never questioned your skill or intelligence? Is that it, Gabriel? Is it because you never had to learn to put up walls between you and your clocks?"

Gabriel stopped in mid-pace to face her, unable to believe what Claire was implying. "Are you saying that the reason I have the urge to kill is because I have a vendetta against humankind? That's pretty damn simplistic, Claire."

"No, that's not what I'm saying," she said.

"Then what is it?! If you know everything, tell me!"

"I'm saying that you learned how to interact and connect with clocks better than you did with people, so you feel more caution and remorse when it comes to damaging them. You empathize with your timepieces."

Gabriel stared at her, then broke away from her gaze to laugh bitterly, eyes roving over her pale cream walls. "For all that you're 250 years old, Claire, you're surprisingly naive."

She didn't bristle like he expected her to. "Why are you pushing me away, Gabriel?"

"I'm not--"

"You are," she pressed relentlessly. "You are afraid of what I'm saying, so you're pushing me away so I can't hurt you." Gabriel was shaking his head at her words, but she wasn't paying him any attention. "If you think this is such a useless exercise, then go over to that clock, that Benét grandfather clock that's running six minutes slow, and fix it. Without opening the case. Mindmeld with it, whatever it is you do, use your telekinesis, just don't open it. If this is so pointless, what harm can it do?"

Gabriel stared at her, mouth gaping, then turned his head to stare at the clock, then shifted his gaze back to her. "What?" was all he could think of to say.

**A/N: this was one of my favorite chapters to write, this and the next. And sorry for the evil cliffhanger!**


	10. Chapter 10

"You heard me," Claire said calmly, staring him down. "_Understand_ what's wrong with the clock, and fix it, without harming it."

Gabriel wondered if maybe Claire was on the same planet that he was, or even in the same reality. "I can't just fix a clock without looking inside! There are so many things that could be the problem, I might as well be guessing! I might even make things worse!"

"Gabriel, if you can figure out it's six minutes slow without reference to another clock, you can certainly figure out what's wrong with it without using your eyes."

"Claire! _Think_ of what you're asking me to do!" he pleaded. "This is your grandfather's clock, I can't just go poking around in there blindly!"

Gabriel's arguments died on the tip of his tongue as she walked around the coffee table toward him, and looked up into his eyes. "Gabriel, I _want_ you to poke around inside that clock. I have faith that you won't harm it." He swallowed as he looked down at her, and tried to ignore the fact that she was so close.

"How can you trust me like that?" He almost whispered.

"Because I choose to," she said. "I choose to trust you."

"I don't deserve it," he murmured, looking away.

Her cool fingers touched his chin, drawing his gaze back to her eyes, and he couldn't repress the way his heart rate sped up at the contact. "I say you do," she said simply, and Gabriel fell just a little bit more in love with this woman.

Holding her gaze a little bit longer, he sighed and broke away to stare at the clock, standing innocently against the wall. Gabriel didn't have to open it to know it was running slow, he just _knew_. It was in the way it looked, the way it felt, the way the pieces fit together. They screamed to him a lack of harmony. If he were a particularly philosophical man he would say that the ultimate purpose of the clock was not being fulfilled, and that its parts cried out in pain from their lack of virtue--but he was just a simple watchmaker, and no amount of philosophizing was going to help him do what Claire asked.

Stepping away from her he moved toward the clock, running through the possible reasons for its mechanical failure. _Why not start at the bottom?_ he asked himself, and tentatively passed his telekinetic "fingers" through the wood of the case to the pendulum swinging within. It felt... strange, feeling instead of seeing his way. He brushed down the rod until he reached the bob, and, light as a feather so as not to impede its motion, tightened, just a little, the nut at the base. If anything the parts of the clock screamed more at that action, so he hastily loosened it until the clock relaxed.

Gabriel mentally stepped back for a moment to contemplate the insanity of what he was doing. Not only was he attempting to fix an extremely valuable timepiece with one hand metaphorically tied behind his back, but he was anthropomorphizing it as well. It seemed a fitting cap to his day.

He returned his attention to the clock. The length of the pendulum wasn't the problem, that would have been too easy. He had to look higher up. Working on instinct, he moved closer to the clock, and put his hands on either side of the hood, mimicking his pose from three days earlier. He draped his power through the mechanism like a web and waited, sensing the vibrations the movement gave off.

_There_. He didn't know how long he stood like that, feeling the soft ticking against his "skin", but eventually it was as though the clock spoke to him, telling him its pain and showing him its most vulnerable spot. It looked like the escapement had been jarred at some point, offsetting it just enough that the anchor missed a gear tooth every 16 oscillations. It wasn't a catastrophe, the escapement seemed secure enough as it was, but... it wasn't perfect. It was off, both he and the clock knew it, and the shift in position was causing the teeth to wear against the pallets. If it went long enough, the pallets would be worn away altogether and the anchor would have to be replaced. As it was...

He "reached" in, and froze the clock, all movements and motions stopping in mid-tick. Ever-so-gently he seized the anchor and pushed it back into its proper place, realigning it against the escape wheel so it would rock correctly, and tightened the screw that held it in. He wound the weights for good measure, and then, at just the right moment--he let go. The clock seemed to sigh in relief as the pendulum was released and the escapement slid into easy motion. It reminded him of a time when he was nine, when he had fallen out of a tree and dislocated his shoulder. It had hurt like nothing he had ever known, but once the joint slipped back into place the wave of relief had been so intense it had bordered on pleasure.

He dragged his consciousness away from the internal workings, now ticking in perfect time, and returned himself to his body. Opening his eyes, he inhaled a deep breath and stared at the happy clock in front of him. That had officially been the most surreal experience of his life, and he had had more than a few to judge it against.

"Gabriel?" Claire asked behind him, and he jumped, startled. He had forgotten about her.

"Yeah?" he asked shakily.

"Did you do it?"

"Yeah," he answered. He turned from the clock to see her, and to his shock the sky outside had turned dark, and the lights in the apartment had been turned on. "How long was I...?" he gestured at the clock.

"About an hour and a half," Claire replied softly, a concerned light in her eye.

Gabriel's eyes widened, and he looked again at the clock. "Wow," was all he could manage.

"Yes," Claire replied. "I suppose it takes longer to empathize with a clock than it does to open it up," she replied.

Gabriel made a noncommittal sound, not telling her it actually took much longer to solve a similar problem without telekinesis to freeze things and provide convenient access. That wasn't the point. _He had fixed a clock without ever having seen the inside of it_. Maybe Claire was right, maybe there was a way he could get into peoples' heads without actually getting into their heads? Maybe he didn't have to kill. He looked down at his hands, wondering.

Claire broke into his thoughts once again, this time to say, "I made supper, if you wouldn't mind a bite to eat."

Gabriel raised his head to look at her, then glanced toward the kitchen. The table was set, and laden with a bounty of food. He looked at her questioningly. "You looked rather involved, and frankly, I couldn't get your attention," she said. "I took the liberty."

He nodded. "I--thank you," he stumbled, blushing. Again. "I would love to."

She smiled, not quite as bright as before, but cheerier than anything he had seen lately. She gestured him toward the table. He followed her direction, but paused when he entered the kitchen, and turned back to look at her. "Where do you sit?" he asked.

Puzzled, Claire pointed out her chair. "Usually there, but I'm not particular--" she cut off mid-sentence as Gabriel pulled the chair out for her.

This time her smile was unreserved, and it lit up the room. "Thank you Gabriel," she said softly, and sat down as he pushed in her chair. He made his way to his own chair and sat down.

"It's nothing special," Claire said conversationally as she filled their plates, "just spaghetti, but I make the best marinara sauce. And I've had time to taste a lot of marinara sauce, so I know."

"Is that so?" Gabriel asked, falling into the mood.

"Yes, it is."

"Well you might have the best marinara sauce, but _nothing_, and I mean nothing, can compare with my alfredo." He smiled as she chuckled, but he felt it fade. They sank into an awkward silence, and he felt the weight of everything they _didn't_ say fill up the air between them. He tried to ignore it by eating his spaghetti.

The marinara sauce, he was forced to concede after a few bites, was the best he had ever tasted. But then, she'd had 250 years or so to perfect the recipe.

With that thought, the lust for her power, half-forgotten, came rushing back to forefront of his mind. The strength of it took his breath away; it was as though fixing the clock had only whet its appetite, and now it was back for the main course.

"No," he mumbled, lost in the rising riptide in his mind. Claire's head jerked up at his voice, and her eyes widened.

He closed his own eyes, hoping perhaps that if he didn't look at her his power wouldn't know she was there, but that was a slender hope, indeed. He could feel her near him, the thrum of her power seeped into his skin and filled his ears until that was all he could think about, and he _knew_ he wouldn't be able to stop himself, this time.

"Gabriel, are you alright?" Claire asked, a knowing thread of fear lacing through her voice.

He couldn't answer. He could feel sweat breaking out across his forehead, and he was gasping for breath like he had just sprinted around the block. He kept his eyes squeezed shut, focusing on his internal battle. _Not her, not her, not her_ he kept saying over and over in his mind, but his will was not enough to fight back the monster inside, not for this power. It was like the answer to all his darkest, pain-filled prayers.

He heard her talking, but he couldn't make out the words. He was being consumed by this _thing_ that ate him from within, hollowing him out until all that remained was the fierce lust to know just... how... she... ticked...

His eyes snapped open, his gaze locking on Claire. He saw her alarm and building fear, and while a small, frantically screaming part of his mind was sickened, the larger part of him reveled in this newfound power over her.

She stood up and began to back away. Setting aside his forgotten fork, he rose and stalked after her, his footsteps measured. His attention was focused on her, to the exclusion of all else.

"Gabriel, remember the clock," she said, her voice tight.

"Foolish, foolish Claire," he crooned, his voice darkly soothing. "Clocks aren't like people, I told you that."

"Remember it anyway!" she cried. "You did something different, you didn't have to open the case! Think about _that_!"

"But I don't want to," he said, the velvet was gone from his voice, replaced by sand and gravel. "It's so much more _fun_ this way." He raised a finger without conscious thought and pointed it at her forehead.

"Gabriel," she said softly, changing tactics. "Don't." She reached forward and touched his outstretched finger. He froze at the contact. Moving slowly, as though with a wild animal, she stepped closer, past his hand, trailing her fingers up his arm as she went.

His eyes were locked on hers as she moved, and she held his gaze until she broke away to wrap her arms around him and bury her face in his chest. She held on tight, as though clinging to a rock in a flood, as though she was afraid of being swept away. She remained that way for several heartbeats, and Gabriel felt her heat soaking into him through his shirt. The moment was held frozen in time, like a scene in one of his mother's snow globes, sharp and crisp in its clarity.

Then the moment shattered. Gabriel found himself flung back into his right mind, and the full weight of what he had been about to do slammed into him like a ton of bricks. It sent him reeling. He thrust Claire away and he stumbled back, bumping into the table. The dishes clattered at the insult, and he crashed to the floor. He scrabbled back across the tile until he collided with the wall, knees drawn up to his chest.

Claire, sprawled in the middle of her kitchen floor, stared back at him, her golden face bled of color.

"... Gabriel...?" she said.

He barely heard himself whispering, didn't even realize it until the words gained volume. "...sorry sorry so sorry I didn't mean to I'm so sorry please I didn't sorry oh god I'm sorry please forgive me..." He felt a tear track down his cheek, followed by another.

He gritted his teeth, cutting off the litany, and slammed his head back against the wall. He did it again, and again, kept slamming his head back until he felt gentle fingers cradle his head and restrain him. Opening his eyes, he saw Claire.

"No," he begged. "Get away, I'll just--"

"Shhh," she soothed. She pulled off his glasses, set them up on the table and gathered him into her arms. He resisted at first, trying to push her away, but she persisted. Eventually he submitted and clutched at her shoulders, burying his face in her neck.

He felt himself trembling like a windblown leaf, breath coming in ragged gasps. Claire said nothing, just ran her fingers through his hair, stroked his back and murmured meaningless words of comfort as he worked his way through his reaction.

He scraped at his scattered thoughts, trying to pull himself together. One thing was certain, bright and pulsing, over his mental jumble: he had never met anyone quite like Claire Bennet. She was so compassionate, so loving. No one had simply held him, not without telling him after that he should do much better, that he should be _special_, and _special_ boys did not get hurt, did not make mistakes, did not cry.

Finally he found himself more or less calm. Pulling back from Claire's embrace, he sighed and rested his head against the wall.

Only to jerk his head forward. "Ow," he muttered, reaching a hand up to feel the back of head, wincing when he hit the tender part.

For some reason this made Claire start to giggle, and she couldn't seem to stop. It escalated until she was doubled up, the peals of hysterical laughter flinging off the walls of her kitchen. She laughed until she was almost crying.

"Claire?" Gabriel asked, unnerved, looking at the tiny woman hunched on the linoleum in front of him, clutching her ribs as she heaved through her choking laughter. "Claire, are you okay?" He reached and touched her arm.

The laughter cut off as she jerked away from his touch, sliding back across the tile. Gabriel wilted at her response; of course it had been too good to last.

Claire realized what she had done almost immediately. "Oh Lord, Gabriel, I'm sorry," she whispered. "I didn't intend to push you away like that, I--"

Now it was Gabriel's turn to laugh harshly. "I attack you, try to kill you, and you are the one that apologizes?"

Claire looked at him, seemed to debate something, then responded. "I've had worse done to me," she said.

Gabriel's mouth fell open, then snapped shut, his eyes wide. Claire sighed. "I've... been around a while, Gabriel," she said. "The aftermath of the Revolutionary and Civil wars was rather more... interesting... than what they mention in textbooks nowadays."

Gabriel turned away and tried not to think of all the things she could possibly have experienced in her two-hundred-and-fifty years. He glanced back, and suddenly she seemed ancient, for all that she resembled a seventeen-year-old. It was something about her eyes. They looked like they belonged in the face of a war-torn veteran. He looked away again in discomfort.

He wondered what her life must have been like. Before, she had mentioned watching all her family members growing old, and eventually dying. She must have done that over and over, watched her husbands, her children, her children's children, all of them succumb to the irrevocable march of time. When was enough enough? When would enough indignities be done against her body and heart that she threw the towel in?

Ah, but she couldn't die, could she? She would be dragged through eternity on the coattails of her gift. And yet... here she was, more than willing to help an almost total stranger, despite that he tried to kill (maim? temporarily set back?) her, not once but twice, for that very power. He remembered Dr. Suresh's book, and wondered if he had considered this aspect of his theory.

He turned back to Claire, seeing her with new eyes. She was so pain-filled, cursed like he was with a power that made her see nothing but death. As their gazes met, he felt something inside him shift, and a surge of power swept through him, like a massive caffeine high mixed with an endorphin rush. He felt... more alive, somehow, like he was complete. Like he could take on the whole world and come through intact.

High on this strange, new feeling he scooted toward her. She watched with wide eyes as he reached out to cup the back of her head, fingers tangling deliciously in her hair, and drew her lips toward his.

It was bliss. Tiny shocks of pleasure worked their way to his brain, bursting against his synapses to release her smell, the feel of her skin, her _taste_. He moaned softly when he felt her reciprocate, moving her lips against his like gliding silk.

Then she was gone, and he lurched with her sudden absence.

Looking around, he saw her standing, her back to him. Her hands were wrapped around her arms, as though trying to warm them. Slowly he got to his feet, straightening the pleat in his pants.

"I can't," she told the stove.

"Claire..." he said, and the hurt and confusion swirled around with the bizarre high he felt to throw him off-balance.

"You'll die!" she cried, turning to face him, tears in her eyes, her fingers pressing the blood from her flesh. "You'll be like all the others, so alive and glorious, but then gone in a heartbeat!" she choked back a sob and turned back to her contemplation of the stove. "I can't take that again," she whispered.

Gabriel stood there, staring at her, uncertain of what to say. He looked down at the table, still laden with the remains of their dinner, then looked back up at her. "I'll go," he said.

She didn't say anything, didn't react. That cut worse than her blatant rejection. He showed himself out.

***

It wasn't until he sat down on the bus that he remembered he left his glasses lying on her kitchen table. He sighed. Maybe it was time for him to get contacts.


	11. Chapter 11

"Claire? I--this is Gabriel. Something's happened. I think you need to see it. I'm at the shop now, please... come over. If you can, that is. Um. Bye." Claire listened to the message Gabriel had left on her answering machine, clamping down on the happy jump her heart gave at the sound of his voice. The message was characteristically awkward, but mercifully short. She listened to it once more before hanging up.

She glanced toward the door, then to the groceries she had scattered about the kitchen. _First things first_, she thought as she heaved up a gallon of milk and slid it into the fridge.

Once the last can had been placed in the pantry and the last bag of vegetables deposited in the crisper, she leaned her palms against the counter, head ducked down, and thought. Getting involved with Gabriel Gray was a mistake, his homicidal tendencies aside. She knew it, and as of last night he knew it as well, regardless of... what else had happened. Regardless of how she couldn't seem to prevent it_._

Helping a friend, however, was something else altogether. And for all that she didn't want to fall for Gabriel, she also didn't want to lose his friendship. Thus her predicament. Momentarily she reflected on the absurdity of befriending and falling in love with a man who tried to harm her, but she supposed that was the very least of the strange things her life had thrown at her.

She sighed. She had an inkling that she was Gabriel's only real friend, and if he needed help she needed to be there for him, complications or no. She could only hope he had worked out some way to restrain the urge to kill her.

Pushing away from the counter, she snatched up her purse and headed to the door. Catching herself before she stepped out, she picked up the pair of glasses that rested on the console, the bows neatly folded. It puzzled her that Gabriel hadn't come back to pick them up, but since she was going to go see him she supposed she could just give them to him then. She slipped them in her purse.

With that she stepped out of her apartment and slammed her door closed behind her, already half-anticipating the sunshine. It had grown a little cooler since Saturday last, but it was still a perfectly glorious Wednesday afternoon. She skipped down the main steps, her periwinkle sundress billowing out behind her.

Before she knew it she had reached the clock shop. She paused to gather herself before stepping inside, making sure to leave behind her caution and doubts. They would not help her. Pushing open the door, she sighed as the soft ticking of hundreds of clocks washed over her, the familiar sound once again easing her tensions. She stood awkwardly among the display cases; though the clocks were everywhere, the proprietor was nowhere to be seen.

"Gabriel?" she called out.

"Claire?" Gabriel's head popped around the divider, and inexplicably her awkwardness eased at the sight of him. "I'm back here." Nodding, she eased her way through the clutter to join him.

He was bending over his workbench, putting the tools of his trade away. She stood next to the frosted glass panel separating the front from the back, watching him. He closed a rather complex-looking press of some sort first, winding it shut before moving it to a shelf by the divider. Next he gathered up a small pile of stray pins heaped near his magnifying lamp, separating them with the speed of the familiar into the little glass jars bunched up along the left side of his workspace. Finally he popped a staggering array of absolutely tiny screwdrivers into a holder that splayed them out like the petals of a flower. His task done, she watched him steel himself before straightening to face her.

He looked... different. She gazed at him, trying to place what exactly was off. Maybe it was his slightly less-than-buttoned-up appearance; his shirtsleeves were rolled up, presumably to keep them out of the way while he worked, and the top few buttons were undone over his sweater vest. Then she noticed--

"You're not wearing any glasses!" she exclaimed. He blinked at the non-sequitir, and this time Claire felt her own face heat.

"Yeah," he said finally. "I left my glasses at your apartment, but when I dug out my spare pair when I got home it turned out I didn't need them." He watched her inscrutably.

"You look... good," Claire said slowly, taking in his features. His nose and dark eyes were made more prominent, and the dramatic sweep of his eyebrows made him seem somehow more predatory now that they weren't covered by the thick frames of his glasses. He looked more than good, but Claire wasn't letting herself think that.

Predictably, he blushed, but he also relaxed. "You think so?" he asked. "I feel so exposed without them, what with--" he gestured toward his eyebrows. "It's like they have a life of their own."

"No, they're lovely," Claire said, and impulsively reached out to brush her fingertip along one brow. It was deceptively soft, for all that it was bushy. Then she remembered what she was doing, and pulled her hand away. An awkward silence filled up the gap.

"Uh, well," Gabriel started, clearing his throat. "Thanks."

Claire quickly changed the topic. "So what were you working on?" she asked, peering down at the stack of watches off to the side. She read the name off the closest one. "Sylar? That's a German name, isn't it?"

Gabriel's reaction was not what she expected. "That's nothing," he said, scooping up the watch and throwing it in a drawer.

"You just acted like it was something," Claire disagreed.

"I told you; it's nothing."

"Alright, it's nothing," Claire said, unsettled by his reaction, but hiding it as best she could. "What were you working on, then?"

Gabriel didn't say anything, he just pulled an old pocket watch from the top of the pile and handed it to her. She hefted it, feeling the weight of it, and the smooth scrape of the etching on the cover. "It's a beautiful piece," she said. "The ferns are rather unusual."

"Yes, it's exceptionally well-made." His brow furrowed then, and he shoved his hands in his pockets. "There's something very wrong with the movement, though, and I can't seem to figure it out. Also... the man who brought it in was... strange." He shook his head and looked up at her. "His last name was Bennet, that's probably the real reason he made an impression."

"I imagine it's not that uncommon a name," Claire said, handing back the watch.

Gabriel gave her a strange look as he pulled a hand out of its pocket to take it. "That's exactly what he said."

Claire shrugged. "You wanted to show me something?" she prompted.

"Uh, right," he said. He shifted uncomfortably, as though searching for where to start. Coming to a decision, he returned the watch to its pile, then pulled out his other hand and began looking for something in the organized chaos of his desk outside the work area, pushing aside paperwork and loupes as he searched. He returned with a pocket knife.

"I think the best way to tell you is to show you," he said, opening up the knife and holding out his hand.

"Gabriel..." Claire said, not entirely certain what he was going to do, but her protest was cut off when he dug the point of the knife into the meat of his palm and cut a deep gash through the skin.

"Oh my God!" she squawked, snatching the knife from his fingers and throwing it away as though it were poisonous. She seized his bleeding hand and pulled it to her. "What were you thinking?" she berated, looking for anything absorbent to stanch the flow of blood.

"Claire," he said, his other hand hovering in the air between them uncertainly. "Claire, it's alright. Look." Obliging, she looked down at his abused palm. The wound closed up even as she watched.

She gasped. And kept gasping, her lungs seemingly unable to fill with oxygen. It couldn't be, just couldn't... "I can heal, now," Gabriel said, confirming her wildly swinging thoughts.

Her sight fogged with tears she wouldn't let drop, panicked, hopeful, confused tears. She was backed against the wall. This was far more painful than anything else he had done to her; this was false hope, and it tore viciously because there was no way it could be true. He said himself he had to kill to gain new powers. Hadn't he?

She didn't really register his arms going around her, pulling her close, or of her pressing her face into his sweater, of filling her nose with his scent--laundry starch, soap and the spice that was his skin. The tears began leaking out against her will, and she shook with the force of her silent sobs.

"I'm not going anywhere," he murmured, rubbing her back as she poured out her hurt, the hundreds of years of loneliness cracking and crumbling in her heart.

Slowly she came back to herself, tucked against Gabriel's chest, his sweater wet from her tears. She pushed back, blinking and sniffing, and turned away to hide her face. He didn't comment, merely passed her a handy box of tissues. "Thank you," she said mutedly, her voice thick with crying.

Gabriel backed up to sit on his workbench. "You're welcome," he replied. "If I had known that's how you would've reacted I don't think I would have mentioned it," he said, smiling good-naturedly as he brushed at the wet mark on his front.

"I'm sorry, Gabriel, to break down like that," she said, turning to face him, face composed, "but I've been lonely for a long time, and it's difficult to accept that it might have changed overnight."

"Yeah, about that," he said, standing up suddenly to pace. "I don't know how it happened, exactly. I found out today, when I got a monster paper cut from a file folder, and it vanished right before my eyes. It--I--last night, before I--I kissed you--" he blushed bright red, "--I felt something change. Like I had never been sick a day in my life and never would, and nothing could keep me down." An awed look crossed his face, and he stopped pacing to face her. "I think I absorbed your power--it was like it was right before I fixed the clock, I understood its pain and I could fix it. Except I understood you and how your power worked, and then--" he waved his still-bloody hand. "I don't think you'll have to be alone anymore," he said, hope springing from his eyes.

Claire didn't say anything. She contemplated his healed hand, processing his rambling statement, then flicked her gaze to meet his. "Do you still want to kill me?" she asked bluntly.

Gabriel pulled back, confusion written across his face from the abrupt change of subject. It didn't last long, however; a gigantic smile rushed in to take its place. "That's the best part, Claire, I don't anymore! I guess once I have a power the hunger to obtain goes away--logical really, when you think about it--" Claire nodded along, but stopped listening. Instead, she bent down to retrieve the fallen knife, still red with Gabriel's blood, and straightened. She looked at Gabriel, who had trailed off to watch her, but he didn't really comprehend what she was doing until she slashed her own palm open in front of his face. It healed immediately.

"_Jesus Christ_, Claire!" He yelled, jumping back only to stumble on a stack of files. He righted himself and scrambled to stand on the opposite side of his workbench from her. "What did you do that for?!"

"I'm making absolutely certain," she said unforgivingly. "Do you still want to kill me?"

"I never wanted to in the first place!" he roared, red-faced with embarrassment and anger, pressing his hands into the workbench he was careful to keep between them. "All I care about is the power, the killing just happens!"

"The question stands," Claire said implacably. "Do you still want my power?"

"I fucking told you I didn't!"

"Then why are you hiding behind the desk?" She asked.

Gabriel looked down at the workbench he was leaning against in surprise. "Because... I don't know!" he snapped. "Just because!"

"Gabriel, how can I trust you when you don't even trust yourself?"

He gaped at her. "That was low, Claire," he said once he regained his voice. "The last two times I saw you I tried to slice off the top of your head, forgive me for being a little jumpy at such a blatant show of your power!"

Claire blanched. "That's what you do, you slice off the tops of their heads?"

Gabriel scowled. "Well it's only been one, but yes, I cut off the top of his head."

"_Why_?"

He sighed, straightening, and looked away, his anger exhausted. "I need to see the brain," he said. "That's where the power is located, I have to find it. Then I sort of... rearrange my own DNA so that it displays that pattern as well." He glanced at Claire, across the room, and winced at her horrified expression. "I'm sorry you found out, I never wanted you to have to know the specifics."

"Didn't want... know... specifics..." Claire's mouth worked, trying to imagine Gabriel with his hands buried in someone's head. Her mind avoided the mental image, sliding off it like she was trying grip hold of a wet bar of soap. She turned away, set to walk out, when she suddenly felt herself trapped, as though the air itself hardened up to impede her progress. Jerking her head around, she stared at Gabriel, his hand outstretched.

His eyes widened, and he threw down his arm. The obstruction vanished, its sudden absence causing her to sway. "I--I'm sorry," he said, shock written through his words. "I didn't mean--I... Don't go," he whispered.

"I'm leaving, Gabriel," she said slowly and clearly. "Please don't follow me." She almost ran from the shop, the bell tinkling pitilessly as she left.

Gabriel Gray was left behind, his thoughts in disarray and his heart in pieces.

Without a word he turned to his watches.

**A/N: sorry for taking so long to update, folks. I had a bit of a case of writer's block that knocked me flat, and I just got back on my feet. Enjoy!**


	12. Chapter 12

It was 12:33 that night when someone pounded on Gabriel's door. Groaning, he dragged himself out from under the covers and sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing his face.

The pounding resumed, and he quietly swore. Who the _hell_ wanted to see him this late? He pushed himself upright, dragged a T-shirt over his pajama bottoms, then stumbled to his door, flicking on the kitchen light as he went, and squinting at the sudden pain. _Too bad rapid healing doesn't make _that_ go easier_, he thought bitterly. He unlocked the deadbolt, and peered into the dark hallway from behind the security chain. He froze.

"Gabriel," Claire said. "May I come in?"

He blinked down at her, his sleep-fogged mind slow to react.

"Please?" she asked. He briefly contemplated closing the door and leaving her in the hallway.

"Yeah," he finally ground out. "Hold on." He shut the door and reached for the security chain, but didn't undo it immediately. He sighed. _Might as well get it over quickly_. He slipped the chain out of its track, then opened the door wide, standing aside to let her in.

She stepped in hesitantly, her every movement seeming to beg for permission. He crossed his arms and leaned his shoulder against the doorframe. Her eyes flicked up to meet his, but flicked away hurriedly with what she saw. She nervously scuffed a shoe against the linoleum, and her fingers were busy picking at the threads in the cuffs of her sweater. The harsh light of the kitchen gave a curious, washed-out cast to her features.

She didn't seem eager to talk.

"Not that it's not nice to see you, Claire," he prompted as the silence dragged, "but why are you here? At--" he craned to see a clock, "--12:35 at night? Don't you have classes or something in the morning?"

"I woke you up, didn't I," she said fretfully.

"Uh, yeah, you did," he said, annoyed. Not that he actually _had_ been sleeping. Restfully, anyway. But she had made it clear she wanted nothing to do with him, and this was just digging the knife in deeper. Digging it deeper and _twisting_. The least she could do was feel guilty for waking him up.

The silence pressed down again, unrelenting, until finally she broke. "I'm sorry, Gabriel," she burst out. "I didn't intend to hurt you, and I'm sorry."

Gabriel paused to absorb her words, then snorted in derision. "Forgive me for finding that amusing," he said, one corner of his mouth ticking up humorlessly.

Claire went stock still at that response, the uncertainty rippling out from her through the air. He elaborated, smile fading. "You made it pretty damn clear that you didn't want to see me anymore Claire," he said, "and it hurt like hell. So forgive me for finding your apology amusing, and somewhat inadequate."

"I--" she cut herself off, and looked down at her shoes. "I don't know what you want me to say."

"Let's start with why."

She sighed heavily. "I'm drawn to you, Gabriel," she said. "In a way I can't really seem to resist. I was scared of it. And of you."

Gabriel felt a surge of guilt, but quashed it. He needed to know. He needed to know why she had acted the way she did--no matter how much it hurt her to pry it out. "How delightfully cliché," he said viciously. "But that's not all of it, is it."

A spark of anger flickered in her eyes at that, and she reared her head to glare at him--but it died a quick death, her features returning to their docile misery. "No," she whispered. He raised an eyebrow, challenging.

"All my long life I've been alone," she said haltingly against his hard stare. "I surrounded myself with people, because when the loneliness became too much I couldn't help it. I was drawn to them, despite the knowledge that they would die and I would not, and that left me isolated.

"Then I met you, and your pull is so far beyond any other, it's like destiny. You are handsome, and sweet, and kind, you are perfect--but then you aren't. You are a killer." The bubble of hope that had been building in Gabriel's chest punctured, and the glower that had faded at her words returned full-force.

"I told you Claire, I can't help--"

"And I can't help being afraid of it," she interrupted. "Every time you lose control, or let slip some aspect of your modus operandi, it scares me."

Gabriel straightened up, dropping his arms to the side. "So, what are you saying?" he asked, half-afraid to hear her answer. "Why come here in the middle of the night and give me that weak apology if you're terrified of me?"

Claire gazed resolutely into his eyes. "Because I love you," she said softly. "Somewhere between the awkward pauses and the attempts on my life, I fell in love with you."

Gabriel's heart staggered and lost the beat. "That doesn't make any sense," he choked out.

"No, it doesn't," Claire murmured, "but it's true."

Gabriel turned away from what she was offering, hardening his heart against it. "And the fact I won't die has absolutely nothing to do with it," he said spitefully.

"Of course it does," Claire snapped. "How could it not? I can't truly love, knowing that my partner will die in a few short years."

"Then I'm just a convenient hunk of meat, is that it? So long as it won't rot away, Claire Bennet will fall in love with it!"

She slapped him, throwing all her tiny weight into it. Gabriel's head snapped to the side, a red mark already forming on his pale skin.

"How dare you," she whispered angrily, tears forming in her eyes. "How dare you belittle me that way."

Gabriel's cheek burned in the shape of her palm. His stomach clenched with a familiar nausea, and he tasted the bitter tang of his blood as he bit the inside of his cheek. In an instant he was five years old again, weak and defenseless. _I should have known_, he whispered to himself as he stared at the floor, mind whirling. _I should have known she wasn't any different_.

Suddenly his anger roared into life, tearing through his veins and stiffening his spine. No one should have this power over him. He would not cower, he would not submit. His nostrils flared as his breathing accelerated, and his fingers curled into fists by his sides. He trembled against the overwhelming desire to lash out at his tormentor.

The expected second strike never fell. Slowly he raised his head, eyes blazing. He beheld Claire, frozen, one hand fisted against her mouth and the other pressing against her stomach. Her eyes were wide and horror-filled.

"I-I... I'm... s-sorry," she stuttered out, her words muffled against her fingers. She tentatively reached toward his face with her other hand, but Gabriel wasn't that stupid. He went rigid, reflexively wrenching back from her touch, and knocked her arm away.

Claire gasped at the blow, cradling her bruised arm against her chest, but she didn't protest, or condemn, or even get angry. Her arm healed quickly enough, and she sighed, dropping her hands. She glanced up at him, a look Gabriel couldn't read ghosting across her eyes, then turned away, sliding down the wall to sit propped up next to the door. She stared off into the distance, her eyes hollow. "What a pair we make," she said simply.

Gabriel looked down at her, wary and suddenly uncertain, his defensive anger bleeding away in the face of her non-retalliation. Slowly, cautiously, he moved to the wall dividing the kitchen from the living room and sank down it, mirroring Claire's position on the perpendicular plane. His gaze never left her, keeping her in his sights. "What do you mean?" he finally asked, voice taut.

She looked at him, eyes gentle and pain-filled. "We terrify each other," she said. "We bring out our darkest demons." She looked away to regard the far wall once more.

Gabriel looked down at his hands, white-knuckled around his knees. "I don't bring out yours," he said softly.

It was Claire's turn to snort derisively, and Gabriel's head jerked up to look over at her, suspicious once more. "Oh, Gabriel," she chuckled darkly. "You do more than you know. I've not always been fortunate," she said, "in my dealings with men. All they saw was a tiny girl, someone they could manipulate and cow into submission, which they were able to do simply because of the era in which I lived." She looked over at him. "I don't generally take well to being trivialized, or intimidated, or threatened," she finished. "I don't take well to it at all."

Gabriel read between the lines, and didn't like the conclusions he came to. "I don't trivialize you," he murmured desperately, half to himself.

"No, you don't," Claire smiled softly, picking up on his meaning. "And I don't slap you."

Gabriel nodded soberly. "Tonight never happened," he said, and the tension coiling through his body seeped out through the crack that together they had chipped. He sighed deeply and closed his eyes, and rested his head back against the wall. The ticking of a clock in the other room filled the quiet.

Presently, he heard the rustle of clothing breaking the hush, and the scrape of shoes against the floor. He stiffened when he sensed Claire near him. Opening his eyes, he watched as she settled herself down beside him, crossing her legs Indian-style. She didn't do anything, merely sat there, regarding him solemnly with those striking green eyes. Gabriel didn't know what to do. His heart was still tied in a knot, and his cheek still stung, but he didn't want her to go.

Finally she shifted and moved again, reaching toward his hands, still clamped around his knees. She froze when his fingers clenched, tacitly asking his permission. He tacitly gave it, forcing himself to unbend. She cautiously resumed her motion until his hand was folded gently in her own, their fingers loosely entwined. She stroked her thumb in small circles against his skin, soothing and apologizing. Ever-so-slowly, he leaned over to rest his head against her shoulder. Apology accepted. Sighing, Claire laid her head against his. He relaxed infinitesimally.

They sat like that for a minute, an eon. Eventually Gabriel lifted his head, and Claire followed suit, letting him sit upright. He could feel her eyes on him, but didn't look at her; instead he gazed off toward the cabinets across the kitchen. "I love you too," he said quietly. His cheeks heated, and he mentally sighed.

"Good," Claire murmured, lightly squeezing his hand. "I'm glad."

He turned toward her, about to speak, but Claire leaned in then, her face suddenly encompassing his field of vision, and brushed her lips against his, soft and light as dandelion fluff. Gabriel gasped involuntarily, and he was overwhelmed with her taste. Sweet, spicy, and slightly bitter, like horehound candy. Then she pulled away.

He stared at her. Her eyes were riddled with indecision and uncertainty, and... hope. Gabriel licked his lips, tasting her again, then came to a decision. He pulled his hand from where it tangled with hers on his knee and moved it to cup her cheek, his thumb caressing her skin. Closing her eyes, she leaned into his touch, her warm breath skittering across the inside of his wrist, and his heart sputtered to a stop. Then she opened her eyes, and it roared back into life, pounding to 90 miles an hour at what he saw in those green depths. _She loves me_, he thought, and the emotion rising in his chest overflowed to pour out furious tingles under his skin.

Surrendering to instinct, he kissed her, the press of her lips against his shorting circuits and blowing fuses throughout his body. Then her lips parted, and when the tips of their tongues touched, it ignited a shock of pleasure that spiraled down his sensitized nerves to curl at the base of his spine. He slid his hand to the back of her head, entwining his fingers in her hair, and swallowed her moan.

Claire suddenly scrabbled up from her seated position to straddle his lap. She hovered above him, taking his face between her hands, and gazed down at him, pupils wide and dark. He stared back up at her, wide-eyed and wanting, drinking in her ruffled hair and swollen lips. His hands tentatively crept up to stroke her hips, then slid higher, to slip under her sweater. She pressed into his touch, throwing back her head and sighing deeply as his fingers worked small circles into the muscles of her back. He eyed her exposed throat, and impulsively leaned forward to kiss the golden skin, nipping and sucking his way up to the junction of her jaw. She moaned, long and low, and he could feel the vibrations of it against his lips. She rolled up against him, bending her head forward to nip at his ear and run her tongue along the outer edge.

His stomach tightened at the surge of arousal that shot straight to his groin, and he knocked his head back into the wall. He wanted, no, he _needed_, to feel every inch of her against him, pressing as close as possible, skin against skin. Without warning, Claire ground her hips down onto his, and every thought fled his mind at the crushing pleasure that flared through his body. He groaned, curling forward to bury his face in her chest as he involuntarily thrust up against her, fingers digging into her back. She trailed her own fingers up his arms, raising goosebumps in their wake, and Gabriel whimpered, trembling with sensation.

"Claire?" he asked, voice rough.

"Yes?" she breathed in response.

"Can we go to the bedroom?"

She laughed huskily. "Of course." She nudged his head up with a finger under his chin, and, seeing the helpless lust in his eyes, kissed him deeply, wantonly. He made an inarticulate sound against her mouth, drowning in the bittersweet taste of her.

Suddenly she lifted off him, and he gave a soft cry of protest, arching up and clutching at her hips. She gently pried his fingers away, but didn't let go of his hands. She knelt before him, shaking out her hair as she caught her breath. He sat dumbly, transfixed at the sight. Then she reached down for his hand to help him up. He got up awkwardly, his legs turned to jelly.

"Let's go to the bedroom," she whispered, then turned and led the way.

***

Elle turned away from the monitors. She didn't need to invade their privacy tonight anymore than she already had. Noah Bennet, however, hunched next to her in the cramped cargo space of the van, watched intently.

"That was unexpected," he said.

"What, that her underwear managed to get caught on the top shelf, or that she declared her love for a killer and now they're having raunchy sex?" Elle asked, peeved.

Bennet snorted, eyes still focused on the screens. "Well, it looks as though we no longer have to monitor Mr. Gray," was all he said.

Elle swung around to stare at him, rocking the van. "You mean we're just going to leave him alone? What about all that 'singing whale' stuff you were talking about?"

"Try not to be stupid Elle; it's unbecoming. Gabriel and Ms. Bennet have kindly given us all we need to know about how his power works; all that's left is to take them both in for questioning."

"That was this morning!" she hissed. "You had plenty of time to snatch them before now, why wait?"

"I was curious what she would do," Bennet replied.

Elle goggled at him. "That is creepy," she said, enunciating each word.

Bennet shrugged. "It's better than television."

Elle shuddered. "So. Plan of action for bagging and tagging," she nudged, raising her voice over the escalating volume of the sounds coming from the speakers.

Bennet glanced at her, then turned to flick off the feeds before focusing all his freaky intensity onto her. "You're sure about the landlady?" he asked.

"Yeah," Elle said, "She's meeting with a group of friends to play bridge tomorrow, I asked. It'll last several hours."

"Good. And we know our targets' schedules, so," he said, settling himself in to plot, "this is what we'll do."


	13. Chapter 13

Claire awoke to the sensation of being smothered. Cracking open her sleep-crusted eyes, she met with the sight of Gabriel's hair-dusted pectorals, pressed unexpectedly close. She craned her neck, poking her head over his bicep, and looked down at their bodies, snuggled together on Gabriel's tiny twin bed. He had somehow curled himself around her, and was now hugging her close like he might a teddy bear, one arm cradling her head, the other draped over her own arm, pinning it down.

Inhaling a deep breath, she paused to savor his scent--dark and musky, with a tinge of spice that went surprisingly well with the scent of clean sheets. Well. Formerly clean sheets. She tilted her head back to see his face, and her heart melted. Gabriel was soundly asleep, his handsome features slack. He looked, not younger, precisely, but innocent. As though he didn't have more baggage than a spoiled fashionista on her private jet to Monaco. She wanted to reach up and stroke his eyebrow, trace the curve of his lips, but the angle he had her at wouldn't allow it. She settled for caressing her hand down his side, tracing over his ribs and dipping down to settle on his hip.

He sighed in his sleep and pulled her closer, inserting his knee between hers and burying his face in her hair. Claire couldn't decide whether to slap it with the label 'adorable' and rock quietly with bliss, or to claw her way to the surface for air. Her reluctance to wake him decided her, and she settled herself more snugly against his chest, listening to his steady heartbeat.

The moment splintered apart when the strident ringing of an old-fashioned alarm clock shredded the quiet morning air of the apartment. Gabriel groaned and shifted, rolling over onto his back to smack off the alarm. Stretching his arms, he froze as he finally registered Claire splayed along his body, clutching his sides to keep herself steady. She looked up at him, aiming for a frank and open expression, and she watched as he plugged through his memories of the night before. A flush spread across his cheeks, and he smiled, returning his hands to rest lightly against her hips.

"Good morning," she said, smiling in return.

"Morning," he murmured, looking at her like Christmas and his birthday had come together, but as though she might vanish at any moment.

Claire slipped up his chest to meet him eye-to-eye, and he gulped, muscles tightening. She gazed into his wide, hopeful eyes and kissed him, a chaste touch of her lips against his. His fingers tightened on her hips.

"You're naked," he observed nervously, and Claire smiled widely.

"How about that?" she said, and wriggled her hips. His breath stuttered, his eyelids sliding to half-mast, and his hands traveled around to grip her bottom, pulling her close. Suddenly he froze, flicking his gaze up to meet hers, and slowly released his hold.

"I have to go to work," he said, the apology written in his eyes.

The corner of Claire's mouth curled up, and she nodded. "I have to get to school," she replied just as softly.

Gabriel sighed, and shifted out from under her. She rose and sat back into a kneel, nipples perking in the cold morning air, and watched as he levered himself upright on the edge of the narrow bed. She thought the stubbly look suited him, gave him a slightly ragged edge that was strangely appealing, and she snaked out her hand to muss his hair. The bed-head didn't go over poorly, either. He turned to look at her, eyebrow raised in an "are you quite done?" expression, and she laughed.

His countenance softened, and he raised a hand to brush a stray lock of hair away from her cheek. "I could get used to this," he said quietly.

"We'll have plenty of time to work on that," she replied, just as gentle. His eyes closed then, his eyelashes dark against his cheek, and nodded. He opened them again, and the look in his eye, wanting and happy and _loving_, took her breath away.

"Yeah," he whispered. He took a deep breath and looked away, slapping his hands down on his bare knees, only to freeze. "What the hell happened?" he asked, shocked. His eyes roamed across the destruction of his bedroom. Books were lying everywhere, torn from their shelves to heap carelessly along the floor, and at least one lamp had joined them, shattered pieces strewn across the area rug.

"You, ah, didn't always have total control of your telekinesis, last night," Claire supplied. Memories of the night flashed through her mind, of his face flushed and contorted in pleasure, completely lost in the sensations. She pushed them aside to look at him. His eyes were wide.

"I didn't even notice," he gaped.

"I gathered," Claire said, a lascivious grin curling her lips, and leaned forward to kiss him. When she pulled back he was blushing furiously. She giggled. "Come on, let's get ready," she said, pushing him to his feet.

He stumbled toward the bathroom, and she attached herself like a limpet to his back, pressing all her interesting bits against him as she spread her hands across the planes of his abdomen. He stopped, looking up at the ceiling with a sigh. "You're really not helping," he said, conversationally. One of Claire's hand traveled downward, tracing her fingers along the line of soft hair that dropped from his bellybutton until she reached his burgeoning erection.

"I'm really not, am I," she murmured into his back, tonguing his skin. Gabriel managed a choked-off groan in response as she squeezed. She frogmarched him into the bathroom, stroking his length as she went. She unwrapped her arms once they reached the shower, and reached around his back to pull aside the shower curtain, turning on the water. He stirred.

"I'll go get extra towels," he said thickly, then scrambled away from her. She chuckled, testing the water temperature. It was perfect. She pulled the handle up, and water gurgled out the shower head, spurting fitfully until it settled into a steady stream. She stepped in, pulling the curtain shut behind her.

The heat was blissful, and goosebumps rose all over her skin. She sighed and tilted her head back under the stream, luxuriating in the warmth of water she didn't have to heat herself. She heard Gabriel's footsteps as he returned, then a long pause. Just before she was about to ask what he was doing, the opposite edge of the shower curtain pulled aside. He poked his head around to look at her. "Mind if I join you?" he asked.

Claire shifted her stance ever-so-slightly to whisper _come hither_, and tucked her chin to smile seductively her shoulder. "And if I say no?" she purred.

Gabriel seemed taken aback, but swiftly recovered, a dangerous little smile curling his lips. "That would be unfortunate," he said, his voice low and deep, and he was in the shower sliding up against her before she had time to squeak. His chest pressed her into the wall, his hands planted on either side of her shoulders, and she felt his erection press rigidly into her lower back. He bent his head down to nip at the base of her neck. Claire gasped, arching against the cold tile as liquid heat pooled in her nether regions. "And I don't think that's what you really want." He blew gently in her ear, his breath tickling the sensitive skin and sending a fresh wave of goosebumps down her arms.

He eased back slightly, and Claire seized the opportunity to slither around in his arms, the slick friction of skin against skin absolutely _intoxicating_ as she faced him. She arched forward, turning the tables on him, and brushed her stiff nipples sinuously against his chest, delighting in the way his arms began to tremble. "No, it isn't," she murmured, snaking her own arms around his neck. Then she stood up on her tip-toes to kiss him. He responded ferociously, once again pressing her flush against the wall as he ravaged her mouth with tongue, lips and teeth.

Hanging on to his shoulders for dear life, Claire slowly raised one leg, then the other, to hook around his hips. His hands slid from the wall to convulsively grip her thighs, and he growled softly into the kiss. She undulated against him, rolling her hips teasingly against his, and ran her hands up into his hair, spiking it. Then she slid them down his back, and dragged her nails against his skin on the way up. He shivered and bit her lower lip.

Suddenly he lifted her a little higher up the wall, changing the angle, and she felt the blunt head of his cock nudge against her opening. A heartbeat passed, then he slipped inside, and he whimpered softly as she stretched around him. Claire's breath left her all at once, and she began keening into his mouth at the slow sensation of being filled. Breaking the kiss, she tilted her head back to rest against the wall, gasping for air, savoring the water that trailed down her face and chest to flow between them. Gabriel dropped his lips to her collarbones, licking and kissing his way across her skin before rising to taste the sweat and water pooling in the hollow at the base of her throat. Claire shuddered around him, trembling, and he started to move, slowly raking back through her soft channel. She cried out with his absence, and with a gasping grunt he thrust back.

The only sounds were the hiss of the shower and the soft sighs and moans as they moved. Claire opened her eyes, not even aware of having closed them, to gaze at Gabriel, his pupils blown wide and unseeing as he drove into her. There was little rhythm to his thrusts, but Claire didn't care, her legs locked around his hips, and bathed in the pleasure that rippled out with every movement. The cold tile behind her, the hot tracks of the water as it traveled down her inflamed body, Gabriel's hitching breaths, it all coalesced in her mind until _oh_... she was clenching, convulsing, writhing as she came. She clawed at his back and let loose a thin cry, her inner muscles fluttering around his shaft.

That was too much for Gabriel. A soul-deep groan tore from his lips and he dropped his head to rest on her shoulder, convulsively jerking his hips, and she felt his cock twitch and pulse, and she felt the hot rush of his release as he poured himself into her. "Oh god, I love you," he whispered brokenly, breath tickling along her skin as he shuddered against her. "I know," Claire whispered into his ear, and rode out the rest of her orgasm, milking him mercilessly until he was utterly spent.

Finally reality reassembled itself, and she found her breathing slowing to a normal rate. Gabriel lifted his head from her shoulder, his dark eyes unfocused and heavy-lidded as he looked at her, holding her up less through strength, now, and more because of the wall behind her. Claire leaned forward and kissed him tenderly, her heart expanding with all the emotion she felt for this man until she thought she would float away. Slowly, reluctantly, she slid her legs off his hips, his flaccid penis slipping from between her thighs as she lowered herself to stand on her own two feet. Back on solid ground, she twined her arms around his waist and pulled him close into a sweaty embrace. His arms rose to wrap around her, and she felt him bend down to kiss the top of her head, then rest his cheek against her damp hair. They stood like that, time passing uncounted, as the water trickled over their skin.

***

Claire had already picked up the mess in the bedroom and was in the kitchen by the time Gabriel emerged, neatly shaved, pressed, and polished. Smiling at him over her shoulder, she turned to flip another waffle out of the iron and onto a waiting plate.

"I was waiting for you to come out of the bathroom," she said, "and I found this waffle iron in your cabinet, so I thought I would make you breakfast."

He took in the complex operation underway before him, wide-eyed with surprise. Then a slow, devilish smile began spreading across his face. "You're barefoot," he said.

Claire frowned, puzzled, looking down at her bare feet. She wasn't wearing pants, either, just a pair of Gabriel's boxer-briefs and one of his shirts. She looked back up at him, confused.

"And in the kitchen," he clarified.

Realization dawned, and Claire mock-scowled at him. "Bite your tongue," she scolded, brandishing a ladle at him. "We just spent the night having lots of smolderingly unprotected sex."

Gabriel sobered immediately, a stricken look on his face. "Do you... are...?"

Claire relented, smiling gently. "It's too soon to tell, Gabriel. And besides, I haven't managed to conceive yet, why would I start now?"

He paused at that, genuinely surprised. "You don't have any children?"

Claire sighed, turning back to spoon more batter into the waffle iron and pressing it closed. "Not through want of trying," she said quietly. It was a tender spot for her. She had always either been seen as an old maid or the barren wife, of no use to society at large; she thanked God every day for the feminist revolution and the new opportunities to better herself outside of the home.

She felt a warm hand press against her lower back, fingers gently caressing through the fabric of her shirt before snaking around to curve against her stomach. Gabriel pressed into her from behind, his heat flowing freely between them. His other hand joined its companion, and he bent his head down to kiss the side of her neck. "I'm sorry," he murmured, resting his chin on her shoulder.

"It's alright," she said, relaxing back into his firm embrace. "I've had time to accept that aspect of my life."

"You shouldn't have had to," he said. "You should have had dozens of children if that's what you wanted."

Claire snorted. "It's probably better that I didn't," she said. She felt Gabriel cock his head curiously, his chin slotting into the gap between her shoulder and neck. "I would just have had to watch them die, as well," she said calmly, but the sharp way she jerked open the waffle iron belied her complacent tone.

Gabriel sighed and kissed her neck again before releasing his hold around her. "Yeah, you're probably right," he said.

"What?!" Claire demanded, spinning around so fast her forehead nearly clocked him on the chin. "Why would you say that?!"

Gabriel backed up hurriedly, hands up in the air between them. "Nothing, nothing!" He said, wisely not mentioning he had essentially been agreeing with her own words. He scrambled for an explanation, and suddenly it was as though all the starch had been taken out of him, his shoulders drooping. "It's just... well, you've seen how _I_ turned out," He said glumly, dropping his hands, and his eyes flickered to Claire's stomach before rising to meet her accusing gaze. "I'd probably scar the kid for life."

Claire sagged, her outrage imploding silently in her chest. "Oh, Gabriel," she said. "You would be a wonderful father. I know it."

He smiled faintly. "Your waffle is burning."

Claire squawked in alarm, spinning back to her cooking, and carefully ignored Gabriel until the waffle in question was rescued and another dose of batter was toasting in the iron. "So," she asked over her shoulder as she scraped off as much of the char as possible into the sink, "how did you come to be a clockwright?"

"Mm," Gabriel said around a finger of stolen batter. Claire glowered at him, and he licked it clean, a bright, mischievous gleam in his eyes. Then it faded. "Well, I really wasn't given much of a choice," he said, looking down at his hand before dropping it to his side.

Claire paused in her scraping to give him a considering look. "Do you hate it so much?"

"Oh no! I love it, it's just... insignificant. I could be so much more with my, your, ability, Claire. But... what's there for me?" He looked at her, a somewhat surprised expression on his face, as though that hadn't been what he had expected to say.

"You don't think there's anything out there for you to be?" Claire asked slowly.

"I... yes. No. I don't... know, to be honest," he said haltingly, one hand in his pocket and the other nervously rubbing his chin as he started to pace. Then he stopped to look at her beseechingly. "I feel I should be important, you know?"

"I know," Claire said, but she didn't, really. She carefully probed her way forward as he went back to his pacing. "Sometimes, though... being important isn't as good as it seems at the outset."

Gabriel stopped to stare at her, confused. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"Well," Claire started, returning the rehabilitated waffle to the plate and popping out the next one to cool beside it, "important people usually have a large amount of responsibility thrown on their shoulders in a very short time. They have to make decisions that no one sees to appreciate, but make all the difference in the world. And then there are the big decisions, which give you renown, but also criticism and derision. Those decisions are not always easy to make. They usually consist of hellish choices." Claire paused to think back on the atomic bomb. "Choices where no matter which direction you choose many people will get hurt." She stopped to look down at the stack of waffles, then turned to ask, "Would you like another?"

Gabriel looked at her, nonplussed, before glancing down at the plate she indicated. "No, thank you," he said automatically. Then he looked back at her, an expression of muted stupefaction on his face. "I'd never thought of it that way," he said softly.

"That's me," Claire said, deliberately cheerful as she divided the waffles onto two plates, forking chopped bananas over them. "Always willing and able to help you see if from another perspective." She swung around to gracefully place them on the table, and looked up to wink at Gabriel. "Sometimes that perspective might be a bit cross-eyed, but really that depends on whether I've laid you down or laid you out," she said, waggling her eyebrows at him and grinning wickedly.

Gabriel laughed, clear and loud, releasing the built-up tension in his body. "Don't get cocky now," He said, eyes twinkling.

"Oh, no," Claire hastened to reply. "Not _me_." Her grin widened, and he blushed.

"I guess I walked into that one," he chuckled.

Claire said nothing, just smiled and nudged the syrup toward him with an extended finger. He picked it up with a quiet "Thank you."

***

Claire was halfway through her second waffle when a muted outburst from Gabriel caught her attention.

"Oh my god," he said, staring down at the forkful of banana caught in the air between him and his plate.

"What is it?" Claire asked. Did she not put enough sugar in the batter? It tasted alright to her, but then she was biased--

"You're Thomas Benét's granddaughter!" He squeaked, entirely undignified. "Holy shit, I'm screwing Thomas Benét's granddaughter!" His eyes flicked up to hers, horror-stricken.

Claire stared at him, mouth hanging open. She closed it with a snap, then began to giggle helplessly. Of all the things...

"This isn't funny, Claire!"

"Gabriel, the man's been dead over 200 years, I don't think he'll mind," she snickered.

Gabriel glared at her.

***

Claire tossed her bookbag on the sofa, twirling a pirouette in the middle of her living room. She had confessed and found her love requited, had crazy wild sex, and then aced her organic chemistry exam--all in one day. She wasn't sure how much more goodness she could take; there must be a cosmic balance sheet somewhere that showed her in the red. But for the time being, she was content to be Claire Bennet, and pitied all those poor fools not lucky enough to be her.

Sighing happily, she sank down into the sofa next to her bag and grinned like an idiot at the library leaning against the opposite wall. Idly, she considered her thoughts of the day before, reflecting on the irony of how fleeting they were, for all that they had seemed leaden and immovable at the time.

Not to say they hadn't been important. Claire sighed again, smile fading. Gabriel had confessed quite plainly that he had killed a man, and that he had urges to kill again. She had taught him to cope (she hoped), but... it might not be enough.

Slapping her palms down on the cushions, she watched helplessly as her good mood melted away. Ah, well. It couldn't have lasted, anyways. "Tea," she abruptly announced to the empty apartment. "Tea will help." With that she heaved herself upright and marched to the kitchen.

_Of course_, she thought a few moments later, wobbling on the chair she was perched on to pull down her mother's tea set, _most of my husbands killed far more often than Gabriel. _Yet there was something... different, fundamentally so, between murder and killing on a battlefield. Gabriel's act had been selfish, covetous. He had killed to gain something another possessed, while the men she had married had killed out of duty, to defend others' lives and rights. She stepped off the chair and moved to place the tea set on the counter by the stove.

Reaching for the kettle, she held it under the faucet--then paused as another, heretofore unconsidered, thought popped into her mind. It... could be said that Gabriel had not been entirely selfish. As far as she understood things, he had little to no choice; he was forced by way of his genes to kill, and it had left him so guilt-ridden he had tried to commit suicide. Whereas, in the heat of battle, killing was eminently selfish--it was to keep oneself alive.

Claire snorted and shook her head, placing the kettle on the stove. She was prevaricating, and she knew it. What Gabriel had done was reprehensible, and she couldn't logic that aspect of him away--but if she wanted to maintain a relationship with him (and she surely did), then she would have to find a way to live with it, just as he had.

With that thought she nodded firmly, and went to dig out her tea leaves.

In good time the water had boiled, and the tea had steeped, and Claire was leaning against the doorway into the living room and staring sightlessly at the refrigerator, cup of tea in hand. The sappy, idiot smile was back on her face, but she didn't mind, her thoughts filled with Gabriel.

She was forcibly removed from those thoughts when a zapping, buzzing sound came from the living room. Claire spun around, tea sloshing over the rim of the cup to splatter on the floor. It was the woman from the shop, blue eyes glinting mischievously over her toothy smile. As Claire watched, she grabbed a book from the library and threw it into the air, and as Claire watched, wicked bolts of blue lightning sprayed forth from her hands to obliterate it before it hit the floor. The tattered remnants of smoldering paper settled across her sofa and coffee table like dark snow.

Claire stared.

"Elle," another voice said, "not now." Claire spun around to the foyer, where the second voice had emitted, and watched as a horribly familiar man stepped through the open door.

"You should really close your door properly," he said. "This is a dangerous city, after all."

Claire couldn't respond. Shock ricocheted through her, and she could hear faint ringing in her ears as she looked at the man before her. Her teacup slipped from her nerveless fingers to shatter on the tiles.

"Simon?" she whispered, eyes wide and disbelieving.

The man said nothing. He merely looked over her shoulder, the overhead lights glinting off his horn-rimmed glasses, and nodded.

A sudden agonizing heat hit her between her shoulder blades, and her muscles convulsed, contracting until she was sure they would tear themselves clean off her bones. She couldn't think, couldn't scream, all she could do was collapse to the floor as her body seized.

Then it stopped. The smell of her own charred flesh and hair hit her nose, and she gagged weakly. "Thank you, Elle," the man said, "that will do quite nicely." He stepped closer to her and pulled out a syringe.

"You're not Simon," Claire wheezed out through her rapidly healing vocal chords.

"I'm afraid not," the man said. He knelt over her and poked the needle into her arm, pushing down the plunger and emptying its contents into her bloodstream. "This won't hurt a bit," he said softly, and Claire moaned. His voice was different, brassier and slightly lower, and so much colder. Tears formed in her eyes, blurring the shapes around her. She tried to blink them back, only they didn't go away, they they got worse, colors blending and smearing together unpleasantly until she wanted to throw up. There was one reason someone would do this to her again, and she began to cry as the world faded.

"Sweet dreams," she heard not-Simon say, and then the world went dark.


	14. Chapter 14

Gabriel stepped lightly, indeed as he climbed the stairs to Claire's apartment building, a bag of groceries tucked against his side. He was going to make dinner for her--ziti--one of his specialties.

Claire. Gabriel's heart skipped a beat at the thought of her, of her snapping green eyes and bright smile, her irreverent sense of humor.

She loved him. She loved him, despite everything he had done, despite the fact that he had killed a man and tried to kill her as well. Repeatedly. She loved him, and had helped him control his power, and had forgiven him, and handled his virgin fumblings with amazing grace and aplomb, laughing gently and wiping his cares aside as she showed him how to do better next time. Next time... Gabriel blushed as he stirred at the thought, and clamped down on his reaction. _Not now, not now, not now_...

He walked through the foyer of her building, past the rather magnificent spiraling staircase, to the apartments proper. Three doors down on the right, apartment 6A. He lengthened his stride as he got closer, eager to see her, but froze in mid-step at her door. It was ajar, just slightly. He could see the illumination from the lights within pouring out into the hall, but he heard no sound--no humming, no footsteps, no water running or kettle whistling. Nothing. Gabriel's stomach bottomed out, and a chill slid down his spine. Raising hesitant fingers he pushed the door open and stepped inside.

All was still. "Claire?" Gabriel called out, nervously. There was no response. He took another step, listening to the floorboards creak underfoot, and waited for any sign of the woman he loved. There was none.

Three details hit him almost simultaneously. There was an unpleasant smell hovering in the air, a combination of ozone, burned paper, and charred meat. There was a teacup on the floor, one of Claire's prized teacups, and it lay shattered, its contents splashed across the kitchen tile. There was a business card lying on the console next to him, the pristine white of it standing out sharply from the darkly lacquered wood. Picking it up, he read "Primatech" stamped across the top, bas-relief, in red ink.

Suddenly gasping for breath, Gabriel shoved his bag of groceries on the console and ran around the corner into the kitchen. "Claire?" he called frantically, denying the evidence before his eyes. "Claire!" Next was her bedroom, but she wasn't there, either. He frantically checked all the rooms in the apartment, but eventually he couldn't deny it any longer: Claire Bennet was not there, and he could only assume she had been kidnapped, possibly injured, by the people in the Primatech van. He collapsed to his knees in the center of her living room, staring at the broken remains of her teacup. She was gone. He felt his sudden loneliness rise up and swallow him.

Remembering the card in his hand, he turned it over to read it. "Primatech Paper", it said. Below that--

"Noah Bennet, regional manager, Odessa, Texas". Gabriel went stock still, fingers clenching and crumpling the card slightly. His emotions muddled together, roiling and confused, and he couldn't seem to think clearly. _Noah Bennet_. He felt something coil in the pit of his belly, something dark and unpleasant.

He rose to his feet and walked out the open door.

***

Elle always delighted in showing off her lock-picking skills, carefully honed and hoarded away from her father's knowledge. She was sure Bennet could pick locks just as well, probably better, than she, but her part of this sting was to get in first and hide. Gabriel Gray didn't know her face, and wouldn't be on his guard with her like he would be with Bennet. _So_, she chortled to herself as she pulled out her picks, _I get to do the fun stuff, this time_.

She inserted the tension wrench and wiggled it from side to side, testing the direction the cylinder turned. _Thank god the locks are simple pin and tumbler_, she thought, _or this would be a whole lot more difficult_. Wrench in place, she eased in the pick, focusing all her attention on her sense of touch as she felt for the pins. There--that was them. She jiggled the pick slightly, and... One down... Two... Three... Four... The fifth was tricky, worn down and maddeningly smooth. Keeping the torque on the wrench steady, she went slower, carefully feeling around it until she found a lip to press against. She gradually increased the pressure, cautious not to let it slip back. Finally it moved, sliding grudgingly upward to shove its mate out of the cylinder. The last pin was almost a breeze, rising with (relative) ease under her pick. With that, the lock popped, and Elle quickly turned the wrench to unlock it completely before the pins fell back into place.

She smiled to herself as she opened the door and slipped inside. Beat that, Noah Bennet! Closing the door behind her, she carefully flipped the deadbolt shut, again. It wouldn't do to put their target on his guard before he even entered the shop.

Which made her pause. Once again she wondered why Bennet had said to booby-trap the shop rather than the apartment; why would Gabriel come here? It didn't make sense. But Bennet had said to stake out the shop, so here she was, staking out the shop, lurking until Gabriel showed. Just her and the clocks. Oh god, the incessant _ticking_ would drive her _insane_ before he even showed up.

Her wait wasn't long. Before she had even squirreled herself away in the dark shadow behind a file cabinet she heard the tell-tale sound of a key being inserted into the lock and turning. She perked up. Nerves jangling with excitement, she didn't even notice the little sparks that began crawling up her fingers like a Jacob's ladder until they started fizzing and popping off, illuminating her hiding place. She muffled her panicked gasp and clenched her fingers into tight fists, extinguishing her sparks, then stopped to get a _very_ firm grip on herself. It wouldn't do to alert Gabriel of her presence before anything interesting happened. Although, an explosive reveal could be interesting...

Gabriel didn't even notice. He jerked open the door and slammed it closed behind him before flicking his hand abruptly at a lamp in the corner. It lurched as it turned on, wobbling unsteadily before righting itself. Elle glanced away from it to look at him, and the sight made her blood run cold.

There was no expression on his face whatsoever--but his eyes screamed destruction. The only other person she had ever seen with a face like that was Bennet's, and at least _he_ didn't have crazy mutant powers to back it up. Gabriel moved swiftly through his shop, his stride spare and powerful, like a hunting cat's, and tore into his desk drawers. He seemed to be looking for something, but Elle didn't know what, and she almost stood up to get a better look.

Suddenly he jerked his hand back as though stung, and stared down at the contents of the drawer. Moving slowly, he reached back in and pulled out a watch, holding it gingerly as though it might leap out of his hand to attack him. Elle sank back in disappointment. Of course it would be a watch. Bored, she watched as he stared at it, then, almost as though he was in a trance, he put it on, fastening it around his wrist. His hand swung down, and Elle saw the flash of the white hands against its black face.

He moved again, more calmly this time, back to the open drawer and resumed his search. Elle felt the tension return to her body; apparently he hadn't been looking for the watch, but he sure had reacted strongly to it. She wondered why. Curiosity pouring through her, she watched as he finally pulled something out of the drawer and pushed it closed. Craning around the cabinet, she barely stifled an irritated growl when she saw what he held. Jesus H. Christ, didn't the man care about anything _but_ watches? She conceded that it was certainly very pretty, as far as she could tell from the angle she was at, but seriously. The guy needed to get a life. Tired of waiting, she stood up and cleared her throat.

Gabriel spun around to face her, the watch chain spinning in a neat little arc around his hand. An expression of vast confusion rolled across his face, and he opened his mouth to speak, but Elle wasn't having any of that. Raising her arm, she unleashed her electricity into him.

Bennet had made it very clear to her that although she could use as much amperage as she wanted against the girl (and she had been _more_ than happy to oblige), Gabriel wasn't a regen, and couldn't take lethal amounts of electricity. She sighed disappointedly as she tamped back on her power. It had been so _nice_ not to ratchet herself back, and it was _so_ annoying that she had to again.

The watch flew from Gabriel's fingertips as he jerked back, stumbling to collapse most becomingly against his desk, eyes unfocused. Elle regarded him inquisitively, head tilted to the side. "You're kinda cute," she said. "I'll ask my dad if I can keep you when they're done with you." She turned and flipped open her cell phone, speed dialing Bennet, who was sequestered in the van and waiting for her signal. "I've got him," she said. "Tased and everything."

"I'll be right there," Bennet said in response.

Elle didn't get a chance to answer him, because all of a sudden she found herself thrown forward to slam against the wall. It hurt. Then she was pulled back and flipped around in mid-air, only to be slammed against the wall _again_. Eyes wide at the unexpected assault, her gaze fell on Gabriel, his arm outstretched and eyes blazing as he stumbled to his feet, muscles twitching randomly.

"Who are you?" he demanded, voice ragged.

"How are you doing that?" Elle asked dumbly. "I zapped you!"

Gabriel's fingers twitched, and she felt... whatever it was that was holding her contract around her throat. She choked a little. "Yes, you did," he said softly. "What an... _interesting_ power." Elle's skin crawled. She knew what this man did, how he operated. What exactly he meant by those words. He stepped closer, his black eyes cold and flat.

Elle didn't think; instinctively she reached in and released her ever-present hold on her electricity. With her hands out of commission she didn't have fine control, but that didn't really matter. She sighed and _relaxed_.

She exploded. Blue ropes of lightning tore out of her, thundering through the workroom to scatter papers and incinerate them before they even hit the ground. Supercharged electricity carved wicked black streaks in the wood as it skittered across the walls, and warped the frosted glass of the divider before bursting it outward as it passed. Gabriel Gray didn't stand a chance. Standing as he was directly in front of her, he caught the worst of the blast, and was bodily thrown back to land in what looked to be a very painful way across his desk before sliding off to crumple to the floor.

Her power fizzled out, leaving the workroom scorched and reeking of ozone. The power holding her up vanished, and Elle dropped to the floor, falling immediately to her knees. She gasped into the sudden quiet, nauseated and retching from the total depletion of her power. Wrapping her arms tightly around herself she curled up into a miserable, exhausted ball.

A small moan lifted into the air, and she froze. Turning her head, she watched as a hand reached up to grab the edge of the desk, fingers clenching spasmodically against the wood. "You're still alive?!" she whispered, shock filling the void her electricity had left behind. Gabriel groaned in response, and his other hand reached out for the chair beside his desk as his head and shoulders hove into view. The chair rolled away under his weight, and he slipped, landing face-down in Elle's line of sight. He whimpered against the floor. Elle gasped, horrified. There wasn't much of his shirt left, and through the holes she could see that large portions of his skin were blackened, the outer layers crisped and cracked until she could see the angry red flesh underneath. His limbs trembled as he pushed himself weakly up to his hands and knees, and the pained little grunts he made as he struggled to rise were awful to hear.

Then, right before her eyes, his seared flesh started to knit together. Elle felt her eyes bug out of their sockets as she watched charred flakes curl away from his body and fall off, brushed aside by the sudden influx of healthy, pink skin. His arms buckled, dropping him to the floor, and he pressed his forehead against the ground. Crying out in agony, his back arched brutally as new muscle and nerve tissue spread through his body to replace what had been destroyed.

Elle was paralyzed. This man had just absorbed more volts than was possible for any living thing to endure, and yet not only was he still alive, he was _healing_ right before her _eyes_!

Finally it was done. He knelt on the floor, his head resting between his forearms, and breathed heavily into the sealed concrete below him. Slowly he raised his head to stare at Elle, his eyes red-rimmed and glistening, with death written in their depths. Elle started to tremble, and she raised her hand to try and conjure a spark, but she was utterly drained--defenseless. She pulled away from the wall to crawl to safety, but Gabriel reached with his power and threw her all the way across the room, slamming her into the far wall. She felt at least one rib break at the impact, and she cried out as she hit the ground.

Remorselessly, his power seized her by her throat and hauled her back up, and she found herself eye-to-eye with him. He raised his index finger, pointing it at her forehead. Humiliatingly, she began to cry, feeling her silent tears as they welled up and bubbled over to track down her cheeks just as they had so many years ago. Gabriel froze, staring at her tears, and a look came across his face she couldn't identify--but before he could do anything, Elle saw a hand ram a syringe into his neck and inject him with its contents.

He whirled around, the strange expression vanishing in the face of shock, and Elle had never been so happy to see Noah Bennet in her entire life. Roaring in sudden, unadulterated fury, Gabriel reached out and threw Bennet against the opposite wall.

"What did you do to Claire?!" he bellowed, face red and chest heaving.

Bennet ignored him, staring over his head at Elle with an expression of desperate intensity.

"Answer me!" Gabriel howled, his face contracted in fear and rage. Bennet began to choke.

"She's...b-been... tak-ken into c-custod-dy," he forced out.

"Why!"

Impossibly, Bennet began to laugh, gurgling unpleasantly past the telekinetic grip that was clamped around his neck. "You, of all p-people ask _w-why_?" Gabriel swayed.

"I... I..." Gabriel tried to speak, but he couldn't seem to get his mouth around the words. He took a step toward Bennet, where he had him pinned like a butterfly against the wall, and suddenly Elle dropped to the floor. She couldn't suppress her yelp of pain, but Gabriel didn't seem to hear. He lifted his foot to take another step toward Bennet, and this time he swayed rather alarmingly. It seemed the drugs were finally kicking in, and though his face was determined, his hand still threateningly outstretched, Gabriel's legs gave way before his foot even landed, and he fell face-first to the floor.

Bennet dropped to his feet, staggering, and gasped air into his starved lungs. Leaning down, he checked Gabriel's pulse before he straightened to look at Elle.

"Are you alright?" he asked.

"Y-you saved me," Elle said, eyes wide.

"I didn't save you," Bennet replied harshly, and Elle thought maybe she _hadn't_ imagined that emphasis on 'you'. She snorted derisively.

"Right, you were saving _him_," she said, sweeping her arm to ecompass Gabriel, prostrate on the floor and out cold.

Bennet didn't respond as he seized Gabriel under his arms and began to drag him out of the shop.


	15. Chapter 15

Elle sat slumped in the passenger seat of the van, staring out the window in mute exhaustion. She watched the trees flash past in their endless, nauseating march as they sped up Interstate 87 to Company HQ. It hadn't been... deliberate, to expend herself so completely, it had just happened. And now she was tired. So tired. She sighed, leaning her head against the window, and vaguely wished breathing didn't require so much energy.

Noah glanced over at her, before turning his gaze back to the road. "There're some of your left-over twinkies in the back," he said. "Get your blood sugar back up."

Elle stiffened, as much as she was able to, anyway. One, she didn't want Noah Bennet telling her what to do, no matter how good the advice was. Two, Gabriel Gray was in the back. Three, she didn't want Noah to know she was scared shitless of Gabriel, and going into the back was a surefire way to have him find out. She scowled in Bennet's direction.

"I'm fine," she said brusquely, forcing herself to sit upright.

"Of course you are," Noah replied, condescending. Elle imagined vast and inventive ways of making his life hell. Like charging his underwear with static electricity, or shorting his computer while he was writing his reports. Maybe the next time he had an important meeting she'd "accidentally" brush up against him, frizzing out his hair. She looked over at him. Nah, his hair was too short for that to even work.

She sighed again, cringing against the gut-wrenching ache her stomach used to let her know it wanted food _yesterday._ Maybe Bennet was right, maybe she really did need a little sugar. And besides, Gabriel was sedated, right?

Throwing her partner a glare, she unbuckled her seatbelt and wobbily got to her feet, hunching as she turned to make her way between their seats to the cargo area. She tried not to wince as she looked at the two quiescent bodies on the floor, their hands cuffed behind their backs and their feet tied at the ankles. They were drugged, heavily, and Elle couldn't help but think they looked rather dead. They were so... limp.

The van hit a pothole as she stood staring, and she must have been weaker than she thought, because all of a sudden she wasn't standing, she was lying--right on top of Claire Bennet. Elle may or may not have squeaked in her hurried attempt to get away from the woman she certainly had not _minded_ electrocuting, hogtying and tossing in the back of a van. She snatched a twinkie rolling around on the floor behind her chair and threw herself to land gracelessly in her seat.

She tossed a glare over at Bennet. "Avoid the next one," she said flatly. He didn't even say anything, the bastard, just looked at her, sprawled in her seat, face red and hair awry, and smiled faintly before looking returning his eyes forward.

They relapsed into silence. Elle munched her twinkie, irritated beyond mentioning that Bennet was right--she did feel better. She stared out the window at the trees, just barely starting to turn colors. She really didn't want to be going back. Going back meant facing her father, and Bob Bishop was never understanding when a mission like this went as far south as it had. Actually, he was never understanding, period. So, for all that Noah Bennet was a sonofabitch, he was infinitely better than being cooped up in HQ under her father's eye.

Hearing a groan behind her, she turned in her seat to peer into the back. Gabriel was moving, shifting his arms groggily and attempting to roll over. Elle turned to look at Bennet, who was looking back at her. "Tranqs are behind my seat," he said. "Give him a double dose."

Nodding, Elle unbuckled again and slipped into the back. She reached for the black duffle crammed between Bennet's seat and the monitor console and zipped open the main pocket. She was confronted not by the hoped-for drugs, but rather with several Company guns, extra ammunition, and rope, among other strange and curious things. "Where the hell are they?" Elle demanded. "All I see is duct tape and socks."

"Side pocket," Bennet called over his shoulder. "Hurry it up, he's regaining consciousness." Elle spared a glance toward the man in question, and stifled another squeak as she saw Bennet was right.

Yanking the bag closer, Elle flipped it so the side pocket face her. She tore into it, the rattling sound of Gabriel's cuffs against the deck of the van spurring her on. Finally she found it--an emergency hypo.

She almost jumped out of her skin when he spoke. "... Claire?" he asked, the word badly slurred. Elle snatched up the hypo and ripped off the cap. Turning around, she came face-to-face with Gabriel, who was staring up at her with a confused look in his half-stoned eyes. Elle snaked her hand out and stuck him in the shoulder, hurriedly pushing down the plunger. Head lolling, Gabriel contemplated the needle in his arm before returning his gaze to Elle. "I remember you..." he said faintly, eyebrows drawing together. A moment passed.

Suddenly he jerked his arms forward, as though trying to grab her, but the cuffs behind his back kept him from following through. Elle jumped and reached back for the bag. "Gonna fucking kill you!" he snarled woozily, and Elle didn't doubt him. Fumbling with the pocket flap, she hurriedly dragged out the first bottle her fingers encountered. Happily, it was ketamine. She scrambled to refill the hypo as Gabriel made an uncoordinated and awkward attempt to pull himself up, rocking and bobbing as the van bounced down the road.

"Christ, Elle! Get him down!" Bennet yelled back at her, watching through the rearview mirror.

"I"m working on it!" She hollered back, voice taut with nerves. Her hands shook ferociously as she pulled the needle out of the bottle. "I guess I don't need to worry about air bubbles," she muttered to herself, staring at the hypo, and, summoning her courage, scooted toward Gabriel--who was, by this time upright in an unsteady kneel, glaring at her in fuzzy anger. "Tear out your power and watch you bleed," he was saying. "Think you can touch Claire?" She rammed the hypo into his neck this time, and he hissed at the sting of the drugs.

Then he lunged, baring his teeth, and Elle rocketed back into the space between the two seats, breathing heavily and eyes wide. What exactly he planned on doing with both his hands and feet tied was lost on her, but she was getting out of the way nonetheless. He overbalanced and collapsed to the deck, and she watched as the sedative clouded his eyes once more. Soon he was dead to the world, drooling slightly.

Bennet let out a long breath. "That was pushing it," he said. "Give her another shot, too. Just in case."

Elle said nothing, and waited until she had stopped hyperventilating before she even considered going back into the cargo area.

***

She maintained her silence until they reached Greenville. "So what are you going to do with them?" she asked.

"What we do with every person we bag and tag," Bennet said. "We'll study them."

"Well gee-whiz, what an unexpected insight!" Elle said, sarcasm dripping from her voice. "Christ, Bennet, why don't you tell me something I _don't_ already know?"

"Did you honestly expect another answer?"

Elle regarded him for a moment. Then, "Yes," she said.

Bennet looked at her, face carefully blank. "Why would you think that?"

"You've shown a hell of a lot of interest in this pair beyond your normal creepy fascination," she said, crossing her arms, suddenly feeling vulnerable. "I guess... It seemed like you had other plans for them."

"Gabriel Gray and Claire Bennet will be subject to the usual battery of tests," Bennet said dismissively. "Just like all specials brought in."

Elle glanced back at the two in the back of the van. They were almost lying on top of each other now, pressed up against the side wall courtesy of a particularly lively evasive maneuver Bennet had made about six miles back. She still didn't think that Bennet was telling her the full truth, but what could she do? For all that she was her father's daughter, she had little real clout in the company. _She_ wasn't regional manager of the Odessa, Texas, branch. And besides, it's not like it was really her concern.

Soon enough they reached the Hartsdale town limits (population 9,830), and trundled along the main street. Elle had always sort of liked the look of the HQ's hometown, and half-wished she could explore it. The old-fashioned pedestal clocks that poked up along the medians, the profusion of green, shady places to sit, everything made it look like a dream from the past. She wondered what it would be like to sit down at the Big Top for lunch one day, or to shoot sparks at the ducks on the Bronx River.

Then Bennet turned down a side-street, and Elle's musings were interrupted by the flat, industrial side of the town. Warehouses, instead of kitschy street lamps, lined the road, and Elle sighed. Eventually, the farther along they went, the warehouses gave way to trees, and the trees into forest, and then they were alone, the deserted pavement stretching out emptily in front of them before disappearing around a bend. Several miles later, the trees cleared, and the hulking edifice that was "Primatech Research" rose up to grudgingly poke at the sky, carefully built up to look like a late Georgian mansion. Home. Of a sorts.

Bennet circled around to the back, pulling through the modest parking lot, and stopped the van in front of one of many garage bays, the door closed forbiddingly. Leaving the engine idling, he hopped out of his seat and walked up to a terminal beside the door. Elle watched through the windshield as he pulled out his wallet, selected a card, and swiped it, then entered a pin into the keypad next to it. A voice came squawking out, indistinct through the glass and the dull roar of the engine. Bennet responded, a brief conversation ensued, and then he was walking back to the van. He climbed in, then turned to Elle as the bay door began to slide up. "Home sweet home," he said ironically. Elle glared at him.

Bennet put the van in gear and drove forward, into the dark garage beyond. He parked just inside, and Elle jumped out as the door slid down behind them. Bennet followed soon after, and they stood in front of their vehicle as two figures pulled out of the surrounding shadows. One was tall and dark, and the other gangly as a newborn foal.

"René, Ignacio, you know it's us," Bennet said calmly.

"Just followin' orders, boss," the pimply teenager said, grinning. The Haitian, predictably, said nothing. Instead, he went around the side of van and opened the back doors, his bald head reflecting back the scant light in the room. He peered into the cargo space, inspecting its unconscious occupants. He turned back to the shadows, and nodded once. Then he looked over at Iggy.

"Yeah, I got nuthin' either," the kid called, looking in the same direction. "No deceptions goin' on, Mr. Bishop, I know." He flashed a toothy grin and tapped the side of his head smartly with two fingers. With that approval, Bennet moved away from the van, stepping into the shadows. As her eyes adjusted, Elle watched as he found who he was looking for--the tall, stocky outline of her father, Robert Bishop, the director of finances for the Company. Bennet was subordinate to him, especially now that he was on Bob's turf, and Elle knew it bothered the hell out of him.

They started talking, but Elle couldn't hear, and eventually they disappeared through a door to continue their conversation out of earshot. She turned away to help the other two haul out the detainees. Iggy hopped in the back, the van jerking under his weight, and started rolling the two unconscious specials apart, their heads flopping disturbingly at the movement. First he pushed Gabriel toward the door, grunting against his weight, and once reassured that the Haitian had the rest under control, turned toward Claire Bennet. He pushed her forward in the same manner. Elle grabbed her ankles and tugged, pulling her limp form out, and Iggy followed, holding her up by her shoulders.

"She kinda pretty, hey?" he said, looking down at Claire's face. There was a lock of blond hair laying unflatteringly across her nose, but Elle was forced to concede that yes, she was rather pretty.

She snorted and pushed Claire's ankles forward, making her sag between them and forcing Iggy to take up the slack. "Just keep walking, loverboy," she said. "I want to get her in for processing so I can get back to my life."

Iggy laughed unpleasantly. "Yeah, so eager to see Daddy to get a new one ripped," he said. "We hear through the grapevine things don't go peachy, and you gonna hafta find you way outta a pretty cell after briefing."

Elle merely sneered at him, but her insides were quaking. She looked over at the Haitian, but he merely paced them, seemingly unaware of the not-insubstantial weight of Gabriel Gray slung over his shoulder. Elle kicked herself mentally. Trust her to try and get support from a mute. It's not like he'd ever say anything in her defense.

They stepped out of the small sphere of light, plunging into shadow, and Elle was forced to rely on Iggy's guidance to keep her feet. Then a door opened, momentarily blinding her, and they were out of the garage and into the brightly lit, green and white halls of the main building.

The Haitian turned almost immediately to the left, and opened an unremarkable door that lead to a stairwell. He held it open for Elle and Iggy, then started down the steps, away from the public facade of the Company to the darker, truer levels below. Elle and Iggy paused, switching places, as Elle went down the stairs first, resting Claire's feet against her shoulders and Iggy clung to her arms.

"Watch it, asshat!" Elle snapped when Iggy slipped on a step, Claire's inertia nearly knocking her off her feet to tumble down the stairs.

"Go take a long walk off a short bridge," Iggy shot back, hefting Claire into a more comfortable grip.

"That would be 'pier', you idiot," Elle said, glaring up at him.

Iggy didn't say anything, only glared right back at her. Finally they hit Level 1, and followed the Haitian as he turned left, then right, and started rapidly disappearing down the long, impersonal corridor. He stopped about mid-way along, looking back at them as he opened the door to the receiving room, where all new detainees were processed. The Haitian held the door open as they lugged Claire in, her bottom almost scraping the floor between their combined lack of strength.

Bennet and her father were waiting, along with a slew of techs armed with needles and clippers and cameras, not to mention two sets of those white cotton pajamas all new arrivals wore. Elle and Iggy struggled to heave Claire up to a table, bumping her head with a resounding clang against the lip of the metal before getting her in position on her side. Elle winced, then backed away, watching darkly as the Haitian gently heaved Gabriel off his shoulder and laid him out on a second table, making the action look as easy as if he'd been hefting kittens, not a fully grown man. Then he, too stepped away, slinking back to stand unobtrusively in a corner.

Elle sensed someone come up behind her. Turning, she saw her father, and she cringed inside at the stern expression behind his glasses.

She turned back just in time to see Iggy give her a jaunty wave and a knowing smile before saying, "So long, boss, Mr. Bishop, I goin' now," and step out. She scowled after him, then briefly turned her gaze to the swarm of techs clustered around the two bodies on the tables. They were in the process of taking the cuffs off Claire, and once they did they eased her arms out and laid her flat.

"Come along, Elle," her father said, his high voice carefully modulated. "We have much to discu--" He suddenly cut himself off, and Elle swung around to see what was the matter. He was staring at something behind her, his face white and his mouth open. Whirling back to follow his line of sight, she saw Claire, laying on the table. She was currently getting her fingerprints taken.

"Daddy...?" she asked tentatively.

Bob Bishop didn't answer, his gaze locked on Claire's form, lax as it was in unconsciousness. "Noah, what's that girl's name?" he asked tightly.

Bennet looked over at his superior, surprised. "Claire Bennet," he replied. Elle could see him focus in on her father, a hundred cogs ticking simultaneously as he began puzzling.

"Bennet..." Bob whispered, half to himself. "Maybe it isn't her, then." He stepped slowly forward, brushing past Elle to get closer to the table. The techs parted as he approached, tossing questioning looks and dismissive shrugs between themselves before resettling to work on Gabriel. Bob looked down at the tiny form laid out and vulnerable before him, and began to shake, ever so slightly. He turned to Bennet.

"What were you planning on doing with her?" he demanded.

Bennet's eyebrows went up. "Question her, as per usual."

"With the accompanying testing?"

"Yes."

Bob glanced down at Claire again, as a disbelieving man might take another look just to be sure he wasn't going insane, then looked back to Bennet. "No," he said. "You won't."

"Come again?" Bennet asked, incredulity and a sliver of warning lacing through his mien.

"You will not test her," Bob stated again, firmly. "You can hold her, but that is all."

Bennet said nothing for a moment, just rested those calculating blue eyes on Bob. Elle was thankful it was her father under their gaze, and not her. Finally he spoke. "May I know _why_ you're keeping me from doing my job?"

"No," Bob snapped. "It's none of your concern."

"It certainly _is_ my concern if it involves keeping a potentially dangerous person off the streets," Bennet said, anger seeping into his voice.

"I outrank you in this, Noah," Bob said harshly, and the room suddenly went quiet. The soft murmuring of the techs died away, and Elle found herself afraid to tear her eyes away from this battle of wills going on right in front of her. The only person who seemed unaffected by the statement was the Haitian, standing in his corner, watching all with an impartial eye.

Bennet's eyes narrowed sharply. "Just because you can pull your own private Fort Knox from your fingertips does not give you the jurisdiction to interfere--"

"Yes, it does, and you'd better remember that, Noah. I am your superior, and as such I am ordering you not to touch a hair on this woman's head."

"Thompson would see it otherwise."

"Thompson is not here. Now get out so I can talk to my daughter."

Bennet glared openly at Bob, but he had been overruled. He swept out of the room. Elle stared after him, gaping, then spun around to stare at her father.

"What was that all about?" she asked, confused to her very core.

"Nothing, Elle," her father replied, running a hand nervously across his bald pate.

Elle snorted. "Bullshit."

Her father snapped his head around to glare at her. "Language," he said, and all his poise returned with that rebuke. She quailed under his gaze, and looked back to Claire's body.

"Who is she, Daddy?" she asked softly. That question had been plaguing her ever since she first met her, in the clock shop. Maybe now she would get an answer.

"She helped the Company," he said, staring down at the woman on the table. "A long time ago." Elle opened her mouth to ask more, but Bob cut her off. "Come, we have much to discuss." He turned sharply and marched from the room. Throwing one last glance back at Claire Bennet, she followed him out.


	16. Chapter 16

Claire sat huddled in the far corner of her dark cell, her knees drawn up to her chest as she stared at the glass window and the hall lights that filtered through to illumine her plight. The drugs had worn off some time ago, and she had done nothing but sit here and think since.

They, whoever _they_ were, no doubt intended to intimidate her, to cow her into submission so she would be a semi-willing participant in whatever they planned. It's what she would do in their shoes. They had taken the first steps already: exchanging her clothes for a uniform, cutting off her hair into a close crop--all to take away her sense of individuality. To increase her sense of helplessness.

She sifted through her memories, searching for any weaknesses they might try to exploit. First, her physical weakness. That was the most obvious; she was annoyingly short (for all that she had been of average height in her own day), and she had little reach and next to no practical strength. Additionally, she was female, with all the attendant vulnerabilities that garnered. Further, she was highly prone to depressive states as a result of isolation. She shivered to herself; if she was in charge of her own imprisonment, she would unquestionably go the route of solitary confinement. She wouldn't last long.

Distantly she heard a door slam, and footsteps approaching. She tensed and rose to her feet, reluctant to encounter her captors crouched and afraid. No, she would do so with her pride intact. She saw the dark outline of a masculine figure pause in front of her cell, then reach for something off to the side of the massive window.

The lights turned on overhead with a mechanical clank, and she squinted into the sudden brightness, anxious to see the face of her tormentor. Her heart sank as she saw the man who had abducted her. Of course it would be him.

"I see you're awake," he began.

"Where am I?" Claire asked calmly. It was predictable, as far as first questions went, but valid nonetheless.

"In our secure facility," he replied, and Claire resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

"Of course," she said, and gestured to the words written on the wall behind him. "'Level 5'." She stared intently at the man. "Let us start with an easier question. Am I still in the state of New York?"

The man smiled faintly, as though amused. He didn't answer her question. "I imagine you're wondering why you're here," he said instead.

"You would be correct," Claire replied. It was pointless to lie.

"We are interested in people like you, people with abilities. We bring you here for testing, and to be tagged so we can keep track of you in the future." The man watched her face closely, as though testing her reaction.

Claire didn't react. To be honest, she wasn't even surprised, for all that he was clearly ignoring her civil rights. "Am I to be 'tested', then?" she asked.

A beat of irritation flicked across his face, then was gone. "No," he said. "No, I was overruled in that department. You will not be bothered."

Claire felt the surprise ripple over her at that, then she stilled. There must be an extremely good reason for why she wasn't to be poked and prodded. "Why?" she asked.

The man's eyes narrowed, and he gave her a hard look before he spoke. "I was hoping you could tell me," he said.

Claire spared him a withering glare. "I wouldn't ask if I knew, now would I?" she spat.

His gaze became measuring. "Perhaps," was all he said.

"If I am not going to be tested, then will I be released?" Claire had a feeling she already knew the answer.

"I think you already know the answer to that," the man said with an air of disappointment, as though she were a student he had expected better of.

"I see." Claire said to herself. Then, louder, "May I ask what you _will_ be doing with me?"

The man raised an eyebrow. "We'll keep you here for now," he said. "We don't release people like you without first making sure you're not a danger to society."

"Then I believe you should have a cell prepared for yourself," Claire said sharply.

The man's other eyebrow rose to join the first. "I don't have an ability."

"But you are undeniably a danger to society. As I am a part of society, I'm sure you'll concede my point."

His amusement was palpable. "Allow me to clarify. Since we prefer to keep the existence of you and people like you a secret, we only incarcerate those that make that difficult."

"The ultimate conspiracy," she sneered. She turned to face the far wall, shutting the man out.

Until he spoke again. "I'm surprised you haven't asked a single question about Gabriel Gray," he said pointedly, and Claire felt herself stiffen.

"You've taken him," she stated, fighting back the sudden urge to vomit. She had hoped that maybe they had lost interest in him, that he was safe. Apparently she was wrong.

"He was half-out of his mind when we got to him. Demanding to know where you were. Things got a little violent before we managed to subdue him, but apparently he doesn't need to worry about getting hurt anymore." She could hear the subtle triumph in his voice; he had finally chipped through her wall.

She spun around and stalked toward the glass, eyes narrowed, and she glared at the horrifyingly familiar man outside her cell. "What did you do to him?" she asked, venom and threat drenching every word.

"Elle may have gotten a little carried away with her electricity, but he's fine, now, more or less, though time will tell."

"I suppose he doesn't have the same 'protection' I do," Claire ground out.

"No, he doesn't. And as far as he knows, neither do you." The man's faint smile didn't waver or increase a smidge, but Claire's skin crawled just the same as she parsed out the implications of what he was saying. She could feel his satisfaction as realization dawned just as surely as if it had shown on his face.

"You're sick," she stated plainly, then straightened to her full 5 feet, 1 inch. "What justification do you have to support this gross violation of his rights?"

"He killed a man," he said simply. "Gabriel Gray has shown that his mind is unstable, and that he should be contained before his power does worse damage."

"And that excuses all torture, physical and psychological, that you may decide to inflict upon him as a result?"

"Torture? Oh no, we won't torture him. He will be contained, and we will study him."

"Like you would an insect under a magnifying glass before you scorch it." She laughed bitterly and moved away from the window to stand by the sleeping platform, regarding her neatly made bed. "How far from your roots you have fallen."

"How so?"

She whirled to face him. "I was alive, when the Bill of Rights was ratified," she declared. "The Fourth Amendment states that 'the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.'" She glared at him. "I saw no warrant. Thus you are in violation of Constitutional law."

The man looked taken aback, but quickly recovered, his customary smirk firmly in place. "What, precisely, made you think that matters to us?" he asked.

Claire turned away, speechless in the face of his indifference. She fought to contain the anguished wail that rose up in her chest. _Oh, Gabriel_. _I'm so sorry._ "By what name may I address you?" she asked distantly.

The man didn't respond for a time. When he finally did, it was in a different direction. "Who was Simon?" he asked.

Claire sighed deeply, and her shoulders slumped just a fraction before she straightened them. She turned to look him straight in the eye before replying. "He was my brother," she said, then turned back to her contemplation of her bed, the sound of her internal grief the only thing she heard.

Eventually the lights went out and she heard a door close, and she sank to her knees, burying her face into her mattress.

***

"So, how did it go?" Elle asked, bouncing restlessly from toe to toe as Bennet emerged from B Block.

"It... was different," Bennet replied thoughtfully.

"Different?" _Don't be too forthcoming, Noah. Can't have that_.

"Yes, different. She isn't what I expected."

Elle snorted. "She's what, 200 years old? I would say that definitely defies expectations."

Bennet gave her a sharp look before pausing to look back over his shoulder through the door he still held open. "She was more concerned for Constitutional violations than she was for her own situation." There was puzzlement in his voice.

"Well, that's... different."

"You could say that," Bennet said, smirking at her, and let the door shut behind him. It locked with an ominous click. His good humor faded quickly, though, back into that thoughtful look. It almost seemed... admiring. "She was remarkably composed, for all that she was imprisoned without due process."

Elle rolled her eyes. "Uh-huh. So you gonna go after Gabriel next?"

"No. I want him sedated a little while longer. I have some research I would like to do before I question him."

Elle's brow wrinkled. "Research? What sort of research?"

Bennet glanced at her before starting toward the freight elevator that divided the two cell blocks. "Miss Bennet provided me with some useful information about her past, and I'm going to go see what I can make of it."


	17. Chapter 17

Gabriel awoke, after a fashion.

The first thing he became aware of as he dragged himself from his drugged torpor was the soughing of a ventilation system somewhere overhead. The scant comfort of a thin mattress under his back reached him next, then the itch of a wool blanket pulled up to his chin. They both smelled sour, old. He wrinkled his nose in disgust and blearily parted his eyelids to see where he was.

Colors blurred together, swirling before his eyes until he wanted to throw up. He groaned, a hoarse, croaking sound that cracked through the mostly-quiet air, and he squeezed his eyes closed again. His head ached with every throbbing beat of his heart. He had gotten drunk once, in his senior year of high school, and he felt now much the way he had the morning after. He decided not to remember what his mother had said when she had found him hunched over the toilet that day.

He lay still for a while, eyes carefully closed, and relaxed as the residual nausea playing hopscotch in his stomach trickled away. His head cleared, just a little. Suddenly, the lights flicked on with a loud clank, and he winced, clumsily throwing up an arm to block the pain. There was a pause, then someone began to speak.

"We were quite impressed, when we reviewed the footage of your miraculous recovery," the voice, definitely male, said. "Not many people have the pleasure of walking away when Elle gets it in her mind to kill them."

Lowering his arm, Gabriel blinked in confusion and raised his head to stare in the direction the voice came from.

"You might imagine why this interests us. All the other people we've... met... have only had one ability. But you seem to have _several_."

Finally Gabriel made out a figure, standing on the other side of what looked to be a massive pane of glass. It was embedded in a forbidding concrete wall, which was part of a forbidding concrete room. He glanced around slowly, taking in the Spartan confines of what was clearly his cell. It contained only a sink and a toilet, and he seemed to be reclining on a solid block that rose straight up from the floor, front and center to the window.

Turning back to the figure on the other side of the glass, he felt himself tighten involuntarily as recognition set in.

"Where's Claire?" he demanded.

The faint, predatory smile didn't leave Noah Bennet's face. "She's safe."

Gabriel sat up abruptly, sweeping aside the blanket and forcing himself to focus when his vision swam and the world bobbed nauseatingly. "Where is she!" he shouted, glaring holes into Bennet.

"Where you can't get to her." Gabriel tried to stretch his mental fingers, to haul Bennet through the glass so he could throttle him until he said where he was hiding Claire, but... nothing happened. He couldn't seem to reach through the glass.

"Oh no, no," Bennet said. "You'll find your telekinesis won't work, not in here. You're not going anywhere--_Sylar_."

Gabriel felt his insides turn to ice, and his train of thought missed its connection and jumped the tracks. "How do you know that name?" he whispered.

"We know a great deal about you," Bennet said smoothly. "You were an insignificant watchmaker--"

"I restore timepieces," he corrected, pulling himself off the platform and getting to his feet, wobbling as he took his first steps. He needed to move, to do _something_. Looking down at himself, he saw that he was wearing a white t-shirt and white drawstring pants. Pajamas. They had put him in pajamas. He turned back to Bennet.

Who had continued as though he hadn't spoken. "--recently, when you started meeting with a man, a geneticist named Chandra Suresh. He told you you were _special_. Isn't that right, Sylar?"

"My name is Gabriel," he said sharply, then turned away, unsteadily pacing out his cell. He didn't want to hear that name ever again. He didn't want to hear the word _special_ ever again, so help him.

"It was," Bennet corrected. "Until you named yourself after your watch and killed a man."

Gabriel spun around. "How do you know that!"

"We've been watching you for a long time."

Gabriel began to feel a little like a bug under a magnifying glass, and that blasted window-wall just made him feel more exposed. "That's not legal," he said weakly.

"Neither is murder," Bennet retorted.

Gabriel was just about to defend himself when a thought occurred to him. A cruel, wonderful thought, that slid together like the pieces of a particularly complicated movement. He pounced on it. "I saw you," he said slowly, deliberately changing the subject. "After you drugged me. When I had you up against the wall. You were concerned for your partner, weren't you?"

Bennet said nothing, but his eyes tightened and his lips pressed together. Gabriel's heart leapt with malicious delight.

He probed his way forward, picking for the sore spot. "Were you afraid I'd kill her? Cut into her brain and watch her bleed to death as I sifted through her synapses?" He emphasized the sibilants, hissing the words viciously.

"No." The word grated out through clenched teeth. Gabriel smiled ferally as he smelled blood, and he stepped around the bed platform toward the window.

"You were, weren't you. Not for _her_, maybe. But you were _afraid_, I saw it. What, another telekinetic like me throw someone else against a wall, someone more important to you?"

Bennet fair twitched. "That's enough."

Gabriel almost crowed, and he went in for the kill. "No, I don't think it is. Was it the woman you love? Tell me, did you _fear_ for her? Did you think you'd go mad with terror, with the uncertainty?"

"Is that how you feel about Claire?"

The sudden reversal of focus threw Gabriel, and he scrabbled for a response. "I--"

Bennet watched him flounder for a moment, then he opened his mouth to speak, and the words leached like acid into Gabriel's brain. "She's an incredible windfall for us, you know. Claire. Just think of all the things we'll be able to do with her, the tests we could take. We could test her endurance, see how long a certain wound takes to heal, and if certain kinds take longer than others. How long it takes to grow back a toe, a foot, a leg--"

"Stop it." Involuntarily, he imagined each scenario, crisp and precise in his mind's eye as Bennet listed it off, and his gorge rose in the back of his throat.

"--she's ripe for the picking, indestructible, and we _own_ her--"

"I said _stop it!_" Gabriel felt his sudden anger erode his sanity like waves washing away a sandcastle; the mere thought of this man hurting Claire, of him violating his woman, was infuriating. She was _his_, and no one else had the right even to _touch_ her. He stood in front of the glass, glaring at Bennet, and wished with every nerve in his body he could reach through and slice him to pieces.

"Or what?" he asked. "You'll kill me? Is that what you want, _Sylar_?"

"My name is GABRIEL!" he screamed, pounding his open palms against the glass.

Noah Bennet just smiled.

***

Angela Petrelli threw herself awake, gasping, as the last tendrils of her dream curled away from her mind. Her husband stirred beside her in the bed.

"Angela, honey?" he asked groggily. "What's the matter?" He reached out, resting his hand beside hers where it pressed into the comforter.

"Nothing, dear," she forced herself to say calmly, looking back at Arthur. "It was only a dream.

He tensed. "Anything I should be concerned about?" he asked, propping himself up on his elbow to look at her.

Angela shook her head. "No, go back to sleep. I'll be back in a moment, there's a phone call I need to make." Nodding, Arthur lay back down. He trusted his wife to know how to best go about her power.

Slipping from between the covers, Angela drew around her shoulders the housecoat draped across the bench at the foot of the bed, and padded across the darkened room. Opening the door, she peered down the hall before stepping out to make for the study-cum-library.

Persian rugs whispered softly underfoot as she passed, their thick weave protecting her bare feet from the nighttime chill of the palatial floors. The mansion was silent, almost eerily so, as though it had recognized that, where once it had been full of young life and activity, it was now host to a mere two. Absently, Angela recalled she missed her sons.

Reaching the study, she pushed open the door. It creaked, protesting the intrusion, and, stealing quietly in, she hushed it closed. She paused for a moment, making sure no servants were lurking in the shadows, before walking to the massive desk that dominated the book-lined space, and the old-fashioned rotary telephone it held.

Drawing the phone to her, she picked up the receiver and dialed a familiar, painful number. She listened to it ring. The call clicked through. "Hello?" a somewhat sleepy voice on the other end answered. Angela silently sighed her relief that it wasn't Peter working the night shift.

"Yes, this is Angela Petrelli. I would like to speak to Charles Deveaux, if you don't mind."

"I--I'm sorry?" the voice on the other end asked, baffled. "Ma'am, it's... 2:30AM!"

"I am aware of the hour; Charles is frequently awake at this time. Is he lucid?"

"Well, yes, but--"

"Very well, please connect me to his bedside. I am an old friend, he will speak with me." Angela waited impatiently as the call was hesitantly transfered, quelling her nervous fidgets with her iron control.

The phone was picked up.

"Yes?" Charles' familiar baritone rumble filled her ears, somewhat softened, now, with age and sickness.

"Charles," she began without preamble. "It's about Claire Benedict."

"Cl--Angie, Is that you?!"

"Yes, of course it's me," she said abruptly, irritated at the nickname.

"Good to hear from you, it's been a while. But... why on earth do you want to talk about Claire Benedict?"

"I had a dream. Claire was a part of it."

"Ah..." he said slowly. "Of course." He sounded thoughtful.

"We need to meet, all of us. Robert already knows, I Saw it. I'll call Daniel in the morning."

"Why call me so late, if you were going to wait till morning to talk to Dan?"

"You were... more directly involved with her." Angela inexplicably found herself cringing away from mentioning it out loud. Like it would somehow be less heartless, to keep it implied.

There was a long pause as Charles read between the lines, then he let out a sad chuckle. "You want to know if it will wear off, when I die," he said knowingly. He had no such compunction toward prevarication.

"I would rather not speak of it over the phone."

He laughed, the deep peals echoing tinnily through the receiver. "You always were the canny one, Angie," he guffawed. "Always one step ahead, hedging your bets." Then he sobered. "If we're all going to get together again, you're going to have to work around me, I'm afraid. I can't exactly up and go wherever I please."

"That's perfectly understandable, we would be happy to accommodate you, Charles." She was already working the logistics out in her mind. It would have to be on Peter's day off; it wouldn't do, having him see his mother with Daniel Linderman, for all that they had been friends in their youth.

"Mmm." There was another long pause, and then she heard him sigh. "You know, it never really sat well with me. How we dealt with Claire."

Angela restrained the exasperated noise that threatened to burst out of her at this tired line of thought. "It was for the greater good, you know that."

"Yeah, I suppose," he said heavily. "But... she was a good person, you know? She had such _love_ in her."

"Love does little to further our goals, Charles."

"_Your_ goals, Angie, not mine. Not anymore." He sighed again, a wistful sound entering his voice. "You know, that boy of yours--Peter--he reminds me a lot of Claire. He has that same gentle quality. But underneath, there's a steel to them!"

"Peter is fragile, Charles. He is not strong enough for what's to come, that's in his brother."

"You keep saying that, Angela, but I'm not so certain. Love can do a mite more than you seem to think."

"I will talk to you soon," Angela said firmly, ending the conversation. "Have a good night."

"You, too, Angie," he said sincerely, and hung up.

Angela listened to the dial tone for a few moments, then set the receiver back. She stared at it a few moments longer before turning and leaving the library.


	18. Chapter 18

Noah Bennet stared through the security glass at the man balled up on the slab beyond. Ever since the lights had turned on the subject had kept his eyes carefully tucked behind his arms, as though the sudden brightness was painful. Noah supposed it was; the side-effects of the drugs the man was on were, he had been told, far from pleasant. Periodically the man's muscles would seize in brutal shivers, and he would press himself down into the cold, bare concrete beneath his body as though searching for any shred of the comfort so absent from his cell.

His misery was palpable, along with his rage and pain, but in the time that Noah stood there, watching Gabriel Gray as he trembled tearingly through his drug-filled torments, the man hadn't made a single sound. Noah refused to admit that impressed him.

"Have we gotten anything from him, yet?" he asked the scientist beside him, dressed in a pristine lab coat.

"You mean aside from some pretty damn creative insults and more assaults on our personnel than I care to consider?" The stocky redhead shrugged his shoulders. "Not much."

Noah didn't appreciate the editorialization. "The glycimerine hasn't had any effect?"

"No, his system burns through it as fast as we can pump it in. We've given him enough to kill a whale." He shook his head disbelievingly. "A whole _herd_ of whales, but nothing seems to really get through."

Noah frowned as Gabriel Gray shifted, raising his arm slightly and showing his red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes. He glared weakly at his two visitors, as though he had heard them talking and wanted to make something of it, but then his arm dropped back, and his body sagged once again into the slab beneath him. His attitude screamed of exhaustion and exhausted pain. "A pod," Noah said softly. The shunt in Gabriel's head glared whitely against the dark thatch of his close-cropped hair.

The scientist looked at Noah sideways. "Pardon?" he asked, nonplussed.

"Whales move in pods," Noah elaborated. "Not herds."

"Right," the scientist said, regarding Noah carefully. "Well, anyway. Even with the Haitian suppressing his healing he builds tolerance faster than than it takes the glycimerine to bond." He shrugged helplessly. "There are other drugs, but they're experimental."

"Will they get the job done?" Noah asked bluntly. He had an agenda for this particular special, and there were secrets in his DNA that Noah was determined to figure out. No matter what it took to find them.

The scientist sputtered in surprise. "I--but they're..." He paused, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Maybe. They haven't been approved for human use, though, and we don't know how they'll react with everything else we've been giving him."

"Put him on them," Noah ordered. "If they don't work, put him on a curare drip and carry on."

The scientist gaped at him, aghast. "B-but... you can't mix curare and cimerines! They're chemically incompatible, they're like ammonia and bleach! It would kill him!"

Noah gave him his best blank stare.

Sighing deeply, the scientist turned to stare helplessly at the man huddled in the cell before him. "Yes, sir," was all he said. "I'll start him on a double dose of thanatiprin, then." He turned away to leave.

Noah didn't watch him leave.

***

Claire paced in her cell restlessly. It took exactly ten steps to go from the back wall to the forward wall, and precisely eight to go from either side, unless she lengthened her stride--but then she had to take that little half-step to compensate for the remainder. It never changed, it never varied unless she made it, and it was driving her mad.

The walls were the same, blank gray as when she had woken up in this cell she didn't-know-how-long-ago. They were just as solid and just as impenetrable, no matter how many times she had run her hands over them, looking for an escape. The seals between the sink and toilet and the wall maintained their ruthless integrity no matter how many nails she tore away picking at them. All she had left was pacing and counting.

It was exactly as she had feared--after that first conversation with her captor, the man with the horn-rimmed glasses, she had seen no other person aside from the one who brought her meals. Sometimes it was the man in horn-rimmed glasses himself, sometimes it was the woman who threw electricity, sometimes it was a tall, black man she had never seen before. Usually, though, it was some faceless, homogenous stooge. It didn't matter; regardless of the face on the other side of the glass, she would press up against the window, trying to get close.

She was lonely. She craved human contact. A conversation, anything to relieve the pressing solitude she found herself confronted with. Occasionally she was drugged, she supposed by something in her meals, and when she woke she would be clean, and her bedding and uniform would be changed. The violation, cruel at first, had settled to a dull ache; it was just one more way they isolated her. She no longer knew what day it was; she had no concept of what _time_ of day it was. Her life ran on the rhythms that her captors set her. Periodically the lights would turn off and she would fight to stay awake; every so often they would turn on and she would attempt to remain asleep.

The monotony was mind-numbing. When she wasn't pacing and chasing her mind in circles she was sleeping more and more, though it was none of it restful. She supposed it was a way to keep the boredom and solitude at bay; if she was unconscious, she wasn't reminded of her predicament. But even sleep no longer held the peace she sought.

The last time she had slept she had been in her mother's kitchen, sitting at the table and peeling, coring and chopping apples while her mother tended the pot of apple butter bubbling over the fire, adding spice and more apples, and stirring constantly so it didn't burn. It had been vivid--she could smell the heady aroma of the apples, and the sharper scents cinnamon and allspice as they coiled through the moist heat of the kitchen, made all the hotter by the baking, early September sun outside the open window, to tweak her nose. She could see with stunning clarity the embroidery that tripped along the ties of Mama's apron, and felt the steady weight of the knife in her hand. Her skin twitched as a bead of sweat trickled down between her shoulder blades, under her stays, and out of reach. If not for the fact that her best friend from her Chicago years, Charlotte, who had died in the Fire, had been next to her instead of her sisters, Claire might not have known she had been dreaming at all. She had woken with her eyes burning, and her pillow soaked with tears.

She didn't know how much longer she would be able to keep her mind together.


End file.
